Energy companies raised $12.6 billion through stock market listings in the first half of 2026. That is the highest first-half figure on record and well above the $4.3 billion raised across all of 2025. The last time the sector saw anything close to this level of investor interest was the dotcom bubble peak in late 1999, and that comparison is instructive: back then, investors were funding the infrastructure layer beneath the internet. Today they are funding the infrastructure layer beneath AI.
The infrastructure in question is electricity. Running AI requires a constant, enormous supply of it. A single AI task can use up to 1,000 times more electricity than a standard web search. Unlike a website that mostly idles between visitors, AI systems run at near-full load around the clock to serve users in real time. That combination of density and continuity makes AI data centers among the most demanding electricity consumers ever connected to any grid.
Gartner projects global data center power demand will hit 132 gigawatts in 2026, up 27% in a single year, and could reach 290 gigawatts by 2030. The International Energy Agency puts global data center electricity consumption on track to roughly double from around 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 to about 945 terawatt-hours by 2030. To give that some texture: that growth is the equivalent of adding Spain's entire electricity consumption to global demand, in under six years.
The gap between what is needed and what exists is real and is widening fast. Morgan Stanley projects a 49-gigawatt power shortfall in the United States alone by 2028. Utility connection queues in key American markets, including Northern Virginia, Phoenix, and Dallas, now run four to seven years. A data center that joined a queue this spring cannot realistically expect grid power before 2030, no matter how quickly the building goes up or how much money backs it.
This is where the investor rush for energy stocks comes in. The standout listing of 2026 so far is Fervo Energy, a geothermal power company that completed its Nasdaq IPO in May, raising $2.2 billion in gross proceeds. The offering was oversubscribed about 15 times and shares jumped 35% on their first day of trading, giving the company a market value of over $10 billion. X-energy, a nuclear power startup, also went public this year, raising $1 billion in an upsized offering and reaching a market valuation above $8 billion. These are not speculative bets on unproven technology: they are companies with long-term power supply contracts already signed with the biggest names in AI.
The four largest AI builders, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, have together signed over 133 gigawatts of energy supply agreements as of early 2026. They are effectively pre-purchasing electricity years before it exists, because the alternative is watching competitors secure the power they need first. Cash-rich tech companies are acting less like customers of the energy market and more like participants in it, signing 20-year direct deals with power producers and funding new generation capacity outright.
None of this stays neatly inside the technology sector. Goldman Sachs found electricity prices rose 6.9% in 2025, more than double the general inflation rate, and expects a further 6% rise through 2027. Data centers are responsible for 40% of electricity demand growth in that forecast. Industrial customers in regions with heavy data center development are feeling it most directly: electricity prices for manufacturers rose about 31% in Pennsylvania and 26% in Ohio in a single year. One 141-year-old brick manufacturer in Ohio reported its electricity bill nearly doubled, and it has already raised its product prices in response.
For any business that uses electricity as a material input, whether in manufacturing, food production, cold storage, or commercial real estate, this is an operating cost story, not a technology story. Energy is becoming more expensive and less predictable, and the cause is a buildout happening at a scale that grids were not designed to absorb. Reviewing energy contracts now, before the next renewal cycle, is the kind of decision that looks obvious in hindsight.