THE GRID
Amy Hood, Microsoft's CFO, said something last month that stopped me cold. She told investors that $25 billion of Microsoft's 2026 capital budget — a chunk bigger than most companies' entire annual revenues — was driven by one thing: rising memory chip costs. Not new data centers. Not new markets. Just parts getting more expensive.
And Microsoft isn't alone. When Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft all reported Q1 earnings on April 29, they handed Wall Street one staggering combined number. Their 2026 capital spending plans, taken together, now total $725 billion. That's up 77% from last year's record $410 billion, according to figures compiled by the Financial Times.
The SpaceX Story Everyone Missed
Elon Musk just did something… and nobody noticed.
While the world watched NASA's Artemis mission circle the moon…
Elon Musk’s team launched its own rocket into space.
A move that was critical to what could be the biggest IPO in history.
Everyone was looking the other way.
And yet, I believe that anyone who understands what just went into orbit has a shot at turning $500 into a life-changing payout.
Put it in perspective. The U.S. federal highway budget is around $60 billion a year. These four companies are spending twelve times that — in a single year — mostly on power-hungry infrastructure: chips, servers, transformers, and the buildings to house them all.
Every dollar of that capex lands somewhere on the physical grid. Data centers need power. More power than ever. The IEA estimates that data center electricity demand surged 17% in 2025 alone. AI-focused facilities grew even faster. And the pipeline isn't slowing — it's accelerating.
Investors reacted with a split verdict. Alphabet climbed 7% after-hours on Google Cloud's 63% revenue growth — clear proof that spending is converting into sales. Meta fell 6% after raising its capex range to $125–$145 billion with no firm timeline on new AI product releases. The market is asking a hard question: when does the spending turn into durable free cash flow?
That question matters for energy investors too. Because whether the AI revenue thesis plays out or not, the electricity has to flow. You can pause a product launch. You can't pause a grid connection.
The capex wave is already locked in. Every dollar eventually needs a wire, a transformer, and a grid connection. That's where the real constraint lives — and it's not going away.
VOLTAGE
Three Signals You Shouldn't Miss This Week
Quanta Services (PWR) raised its full-year 2026 earnings guidance after Q1 revenue rose to $7.87 billion, up from $6.23 billion a year earlier. The company now targets adjusted EPS of $13.55 to $14.25, well above Wall Street's prior estimate of $13.09. Total backlog stands at a record $48.5 billion, driven by broad-based demand across electric power, renewables, and data center infrastructure. CEO Earl Austin framed the quarter within Quanta's Investor Day messaging, emphasizing that customers need "execution certainty, labor certainty, supply chain certainty, schedule certainty" across a multi-year infrastructure buildout. That backlog doesn't lie.
MasTec (MTZ) called Q1 2026 the strongest first quarter in company history. Revenue hit $3.829 billion, up 34% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA jumped 73%. Backlog reached a record $20.3 billion — up $1.4 billion in a single quarter. Shares are up 86% year-to-date. CEO José Mas held an Investor Day on May 12 and pointed to data center connectivity and grid upgrades as "multiyear, high-visibility growth drivers." The stock isn't cheap. But the order book keeps growing.
Ford launched Ford Energy this month — a new battery storage subsidiary targeting 20 GWh of annual capacity. The company is repurposing its idle EV battery plants in Kentucky and Michigan to build grid-scale storage systems. Ford signed an agreement with EDF giving the French energy giant the right to procure up to 4 GWh per year of Ford's containerized battery systems. First deliveries begin in 2028. The U.S. is on track to add 24 GW of utility-scale storage this year alone, nearly double 2025's record. Ford is betting it can sell into that wave — and use domestic manufacturing to claim the 48E tax credit advantage over Chinese suppliers.
The American Clean Power Association announced $100 billion in battery storage investments targeting deployment by 2030. LG Energy Solution Vertech alone expects to deliver 16.5 GWh from its Michigan plant this year. The investment wave reflects a structural shift: battery storage has moved from a niche grid tool to core infrastructure. Global battery storage shipments grew 75.5% in 2025, reaching 421 GWh. The U.S. had 137 GWh of utility-scale storage at year-end 2025. The 2030 target is 600+ GWh. That's nearly a fivefold increase in five years.
WIRED IN
NuScale Has $1 Billion. Now It Needs a Customer.
NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) reported Q1 2026 results on May 7. Revenue was $0.6 million. That's not a typo. The company spent the quarter advancing its commercial pipeline rather than booking sales, and investors have mostly accepted that.
What they haven't ignored is the balance sheet. NuScale ended the quarter with $1 billion in liquidity, climbing above $1.2 billion by early May. That runway matters. SMR commercialization is expensive, slow, and unforgiving of companies that run out of cash before the orders arrive.
The market has been paying attention. SMR shares surged more than 15% in mid-April after the Energy Secretary told Congress that the first 5–10 new nuclear reactors will almost certainly receive DOE loans. NuScale was cited by name. For a company burning cash to reach commercial deployment, federal loan backing is more than good news — it could be the difference between a reactor getting built and a project dying on paper.
NuScale also expanded its fuel supply chain partnership with Framatome in Q1 and met with 37 component suppliers to align production timelines. It opened a new operations hub in Houston's Energy Corridor on April 29. These are quiet moves. But they're the kind of moves a company makes when it believes the first orders are coming.
The IEA's April 2026 report confirmed that the global pipeline of conditional SMR offtake agreements has nearly doubled in six months — from 25 GW at end of 2024 to 45 GW today, driven almost entirely by data center operators hunting for clean, firm power.
SMR +86% YTD
PWR +32% YTD
MTZ +86% YTD
Nuclear is the one power source that delivers firm, carbon-free baseload at the scale AI data centers need. Wind doesn't do it. Solar doesn't do it. Gas can do it, but data center operators are under ESG pressure to avoid it long-term. SMRs are, on paper, the perfect answer. The market is starting to price that in — even before a single commercial unit has been built.
