For the last eighteen months, nearly every AI headline has been about chips. Nvidia. TSMC. The GPU arms race.
Almost nobody’s been writing about the thing that actually stops an AI data center cold.
Electricity.
That’s starting to change. And the four companies with the deepest pockets and the best information in the world just showed you, in plain sight, where they think this is headed.
They’re buying nuclear power plants.
The Setup
None of this happened with a press conference. It happened in a string of individual, easy-to-miss announcements over the past year:
Microsoft signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 — the 835-megawatt reactor that’s been dark since 2019. Target restart: 2028.
Amazon locked in up to 1,920 megawatts from Talen Energy’s Susquehanna nuclear plant under a 17-year deal running to 2042, and separately partnered with X-energy to build new small modular reactors.
Google signed on for up to 500 megawatts from Kairos Power’s next-generation reactors.
Meta partnered with Oklo on a 1.2-gigawatt nuclear campus in Ohio — 16 reactor units, 75 megawatts each.
Four different companies. Four different deal structures. Same conclusion.
Why This Matters Now
Here’s the math driving it. U.S. data center electricity demand is on pace to roughly double this decade — from about 17 gigawatts in 2022 to 35 gigawatts by 2030. In some regions, getting a new facility connected to the existing grid now takes up to a decade.
Big Tech doesn’t have a decade to wait.
Washington has taken notice too. The federal government has directed U.S. nuclear capacity to expand to 400 gigawatts by 2050 — nearly four times today’s level — and has framed it explicitly as a national security priority, not just an energy one.
Wall Street has started pricing this in. Constellation Energy carries Buy ratings from Barclays, Bernstein, and others, with analyst price targets mostly in the $325–$375 range against a stock trading in the mid-$270s as of early September. That’s the market’s read on a company that’s already under contract with Microsoft.
The Fuel Problem Nobody’s Pricing In
Here’s what most of this coverage misses entirely.
Every one of these next-generation reactors — Kairos’s, X-energy’s, Oklo’s — runs on a specialized fuel called HALEU: high-assay, low-enriched uranium. It’s not the same fuel that powers today’s conventional reactors, and for decades, the United States simply stopped making it. Russia became the West’s default supplier.
In January 2026, the Department of Energy finalized a $2.7 billion program to fix that, splitting the award three ways between Centrus Energy, French firm Orano, and startup General Matter.
Centrus got a $900 million task order to expand HALEU production at its Piketon, Ohio facility — and it’s currently the only company in the country licensed to produce the fuel at scale. In February, it brought on Fluor as its construction partner. In April, it added Geiger Brothers to break ground. The buildout is already underway, not proposed.
Its fuel is what powers the reactors Google’s own partner, Kairos Power, is building.
Almost nobody outside the nuclear industry has heard of it.
Three Ways to Position Around This
We’re not going to pretend there’s one perfect way to play a trend this size. There isn’t. Here are three distinct approaches, each with a different risk profile.
1. The Utilities Already Cashing the Checks
Constellation Energy (NASDAQ: CEG) and Talen Energy (NASDAQ: TLN) are the two power producers with signed, active contracts with Microsoft and Amazon, respectively. This is the lowest-risk way into the theme — you’re not betting on a future deal, you’re buying companies already getting paid under ones that exist today. Constellation recently traded in the mid-$270s with a Buy consensus; Talen has traded north of $300. Both carry the valuation that comes with being the “safe” way to play this.
2. The Diversified Basket
The VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NYSEARCA: NLR) spreads a single position across the entire nuclear value chain — uranium producers, utilities, reactor developers, and the engineering and equipment firms that support them. Recently trading around $110, it’s the way to own the theme broadly instead of picking individual winners.
3. The One Almost Nobody’s Watching
Centrus Energy (NYSE: LEU) is the fuel supplier behind door number three. It’s smaller, it’s more volatile, and it’s tied to execution risk on a multi-billion-dollar facility expansion that’s still in progress. It’s also the only company in America currently licensed to produce the exact fuel this entire next generation of reactors needs — with $900 million in federal backing already committed. Recently trading near $152, it’s had a sharp pullback that’s worth watching rather than chasing.
The Bottom Line
This isn’t a story about a single hidden stock quietly cornering a market. It’s a documented, dated shift in how the largest technology companies on earth plan to power the next decade — backed by signed contracts, not speculation, and reinforced by a federal fuel-supply program that’s already breaking ground.
Which of the three approaches fits depends entirely on your own risk tolerance and time horizon.
Risk Disclosure: This report is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Nuclear energy, utility, ETF, and small-cap equity investments all carry real risk, including the potential loss of principal. Stock prices, analyst ratings, and price targets referenced above are current as of the dates noted and will change. Wall Street Watchdogs is not a registered investment adviser. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision.
