• THE GRID
Texas Just Cut Its Power Forecast by More Than Half. The Market Felt It.
Last month, Texas power demand was set to grow 14% next year. That would have been the biggest jump in a decade.
Then Governor Abbott hit pause.
New government data shows Texas now expects 6% load growth for 2027. Not 14%. The gap is huge. And it showed up in one day.
Nine days ago, Abbott froze all new data center grid hookups. He ordered ERCOT and the PUC to audit every project in the queue. That queue holds 474 GW of requests. About 90% of them are data centers.
To put that in scale: ERCOT's all-time peak demand is about 91 GW. The queue is more than five times that.
Old TX Load Growth
14%
| New TX Load Growth
6%
|
ERCOT Queue
474 GW
| GW at Risk
49.8 GW
|
Apple’s $5T Market Cap Just Validated This Trend
Apple just crossed a historic milestone.
The company reached a $5 trillion market value as shares climbed 25% this year.
New product launches, growing interest in foldable phones, and a leasing program built to drive more frequent upgrades.
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BloombergNEF ran the math. The pause puts 49.8 GW of planned data center load at risk of delay. That's almost 20% of the entire U.S. data center pipeline of 253 GW.
The money at stake is staggering. BNEF says AI compute can earn about $1.76 billion per gigawatt per month. Under a 60% AI mix scenario, cumulative revenue losses could reach just over $8 billion by the first quarter of 2027. In a worst case, the tab runs to $15 billion.
Delays in energization over this period could thus put billions of dollars of data center leasing revenue at risk.
But here's what I'm watching. The freeze isn't killing demand. It's rerouting it. NRG just unveiled a $3.2 billion "bring your own power" gas plant for a hyperscaler — in Texas. Energy Vault signed a 1.25 GW off-grid deal — in Texas. The projects skip the queue by skipping the grid.
Texas tried to slow down data center growth. Instead, it may have just pushed billions of dollars off-grid even faster.
The demand didn't shrink. It found a different wire.
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• VOLTAGE
The Grid Can't Keep Up. So They're Building Around It.
Google says some new data center sites face 12 years to get a grid hookup. Twelve years. In AI time, that's three generations of chips.
So the money is going off-grid. Fast.
Energy Vault's new 1.25 GW deal in Texas pairs battery storage, gas generators, and AI-driven software into a single off-grid power plant. It's designed to bring compute online in 4 to 12 months — not the 5-plus years of a typical grid connection. Caterpillar supplies the engines. Energy Vault adds batteries and smart controls.
A different kind of power play is coming from Antora Energy. The startup closed a $550 million Series C on July 30, at a $2.47 billion valuation. Antora heats solid carbon blocks to about 2,400°C and stores that heat as energy. It targets both data centers and heavy industry.
Antora Energy · Series C
$550M
One of the largest cleantech rounds of 2026 — valuing the thermal battery maker at $2.47B.
|
BNEF forecasts 158 GW of new energy storage worldwide this year. That's up 41% from 2025's record 112 GW. The storage market is exploding because the grid wait is too long.
Gas, batteries, thermal blocks. Every solution points the same way. The fastest path to AI power now runs around the grid, not through it.
• WIRED IN
Four Signals From the Power Build
Quanta Services (PWR) posted Q2 revenue of $9.56 billion and raised full-year guidance across every metric. Backlog hit a record $53.4 billion. Adjusted EPS came in at $4.24, well above estimates. The company now expects 2026 revenue between $39.3 billion and $39.7 billion.
That backlog feeds into the next signal. Energy Vault (NRGV) signed its largest deal ever — a 1.25 GW off-grid power system for a hyperscaler in Texas. The contract brings $500–$600 million of revenue across the back half of 2026 and 2027. CEO Robert Piconi called it a shift "from an energy storage technology pioneer into an integrated energy infrastructure provider.
Meanwhile, NRG Energy (NRG) went the other direction on its Q2 call. It unveiled a $3.2 billion, 1.2 GW gas plant built just for one AI hyperscaler — also in Texas. The plant targets $500 million in annual EBITDA and $375 million in free cash flow. NRG is calling it "bring your own power." The project could expand to 2.4 GW.
And S&P Global (SPGI) is betting on the data layer. On July 28, it agreed to buy datacenterHawk, a firm that tracks power and site data for data centers. When the largest financial data company on Earth buys a data center intelligence tracker, the thesis is clear.
Builders, power providers, and data trackers are all moving in the same direction — toward dedicated, purpose-built energy for AI.
Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com.
Mode Mobile received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.
Mode revenue and EBITDA numbers include full year revenue and EBITDA of businesses acquired by Mode Mobile in 2025.
