THE BIGGEST UTILITY MERGER IN 28 YEARS IS DRIVEN BY ONE THING ONLY — AI WANTS MORE POWER THAN THE GRID CAN PROVIDE NextEra Energy announced on May 18 that it will buy Dominion Energy in an all-stock transaction worth $67 billion. It is the largest utility merger since Exxon bought Mobil in 1998 and the explicit rationale is artificial intelligence. Data centers for AI training and inference have become the fastest-growing source of electricity demand in the country, particularly along the Virginia corridor where Dominion operates. Northern Virginia alone hosts more data center square footage than any comparable region on Earth. NextEra, the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, looked at that demand pipeline and decided it needed Dominion’s transmission lines, generation capacity, and grid connections to feed it. The combined company would serve 10 million customer accounts across Florida, Virginia, and the Carolinas with 110 gigawatts of generation capacity and a pipeline of large industrial load contracts exceeding 130 gigawatts. Management is projecting annual earnings growth above 9 percent through 2032, almost entirely driven by AI-related power demand. The deal requires regulatory approval in multiple states. It also raises an uncomfortable question that regulators will have to answer. If the nation’s largest utility is being restructured to serve AI data centers, who pays when residential customers compete with server farms for grid capacity in a heat wave? Keywords: NextEra Dominion merger, AI energy demand, AI data centers power grid, utility merger AI, AI electricity