THE GRID
The $67 Billion Bet That the Grid Is the New Oil
Sixty-seven billion dollars. That's what NextEra Energy just agreed to pay for Dominion Energy. It's the largest utility merger in American history.
I read the SEC filing this morning. One line jumped out. The combined company will own 110 gigawatts of power across Florida, Virginia, and the Carolinas. It will serve 10 million customers. More than 80% of its business will be regulated.
This is not a tech deal. It's not a bank deal. It's a power deal. And it tells you where the smart money is going.
One Filing Just Changed The SpaceX IPO Forever
SpaceX filed its S-1.
June 12 is now confirmed. $75 billion. Ticker SPCX. The largest IPO in history.
You will not get shares. The 21-bank syndicate already locked them up.
But the S-1 just exposed the one company Musk cannot operate without.
It's publicly traded. It's still cheap. And in 22 days, the whole world will know its name.
Dylan Jovine is giving it away — free — before the window closes.
Why now? Because the four big hyperscalers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta — plan to spend $725 billion on capex this year. That's up 77% from 2025. Most of that cash is going into data centers. And data centers need one thing above all else: power.
The IEA said it plainly last month. Data centers now drive half of all U.S. electricity demand growth. Goldman Sachs sees U.S. data center power demand jumping from 31 GW in 2025 to 41 GW this year. By 2027, it could hit 66 GW.
NextEra's CEO John Ketchum said the deal lets them meet surging demand while keeping prices fair across four states. That's the pitch. But the real story is simpler. The Southeast is where data centers are going next. Virginia is full. The Carolinas and Florida are wide open.
Regulators in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina still need to approve this. That could take 12 to 18 months. But the signal is clear.
Electricity is the new oil. And the biggest utilities are consolidating to control the supply.
VOLTAGE
A Nuclear Reactor in a Hole in the Ground
Deep Fission wants to put a small nuclear reactor a mile underground. This week, it filed for a $157 million IPO on the Nasdaq.
The company is three years old. It has no revenue. Its auditors flagged a "going concern" warning — meaning it might run out of cash within a year. And it quietly dropped its July 2026 target date for reaching criticality from the S-1 filing. No new date was offered.
Yet the asking price is $1.66 billion.
$1.66B
The bull case: data centers are desperate for clean, firm power. X-Energy went public in April and its shares are up 16% over the IPO price. The DOE just handed out fresh SMR funding this month. Investor appetite for nuclear is real.
The bear case: Deep Fission's "Gravity Reactor" concept hasn't been tested. Its borehole drilling specs aren't final. TechCrunch noted the same going-concern language was in the company's failed SPAC deal last year. Blue Owl, a data center developer, put in $20 million — but signed only a non-binding letter of intent for future plants.
Nuclear is a real answer to AI's power problem. But not every company waving the nuclear flag deserves a billion-dollar ticket.
WIRED IN
Signals From the Grid
GE Vernova (GEV) booked $2.4 billion in data center equipment orders in Q1 alone — more than it booked in all of 2025. The company raised its full-year revenue target to $44.5–$45.5 billion and lifted its margin outlook to 12%–14%. Its backlog now sits at $163 billion. Shares hit an all-time high in April after the report.
Eaton (ETN) posted record Q1 revenue of $7.5 billion, up 17% year over year. Organic growth was 10%. The company makes the switchgear, transformers, and power panels that go into every new data center. Full-year adjusted EPS guidance: $13.00–$13.50, up 10% at the midpoint from 2025.
The two grid ETFs I track keep climbing. VOLT (Tema Electrification) is up 82% over the past year. GRID (First Trust Smart Grid) is up 60%. Both are beating the S&P by a wide margin. The top holdings — GE Vernova, Eaton, Quanta Services — are the same names printing record backlogs right now.
The DOE just issued its fifth emergency order to keep Constellation Energy's Eddystone gas plant running near Philadelphia. The units were first set to retire in May 2025. One year later, they're still on. PJM also won a new order letting it tap backup generators at data centers as a last resort before rolling blackouts this summer. The grid is that tight.
