NextEra, Google Plan Multi-GW Data Center Buildout as Power Crunch Deepens in AI Era

NextEra Energy and Google Cloud are expanding their long-running partnership with plans to jointly develop multiple gigawatt-scale data center campuses across the U.S. to meet rising AI demand.

The companies announced the plan on Monday, which underscores how the rapid rise of AI compute — and a parallel pivot by Bitcoin miners into high-density hosting — is straining the U.S. power system and accelerating a new wave of energy development.

Under the agreement, NextEra and Google will co-develop land, interconnection, and dedicated generation resources for several large data center sites. Three campuses are already in development, with additional locations under review. The companies did not disclose financial terms or the total capacity of the new power buildout.

The initiative builds on roughly 3.5 gigawatts that the two firms already have in operation or under contract, including Google’s power purchase arrangements tied to the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa and 600 MW of planned clean-energy additions in Oklahoma.

Alphabet shares were little changed on Monday, while NextEra (NYSE: NEE-N) slipped about 1% in afternoon trading.

The partnership lands amid a historic surge in U.S. electricity demand, driven primarily by AI data centers, as featured in a recent Financial Times report. With grid capacity constrained in key regions, large technology firms have increasingly turned to custom generation projects to ensure timely access to power.

“We are positioning our company around bring-your-own-generation, and we are uniquely positioned to win this,” NextEra CEO John Ketchum said at an investor call.

NextEra expects to add at least 15 GW of new generation for data centers by 2035, with potential for significantly more.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the partnership will help meet rising customer demand as AI workloads scale. Google will also integrate its AI models, including time-series forecasting and weather modeling tools, with NextEra’s operational systems to improve grid planning, maintenance scheduling, and outage prediction.

The companies plan to launch their first jointly developed AI-powered grid-operations product in the Google Cloud Marketplace by mid-2026.

NextEra and Google’s ramp-up reflects a broader structural shift: a scramble by data center operators, cloud providers, and even Bitcoin miners to secure power in an increasingly supply-constrained environment.