Grid, Transmission & Power Equipment

Valmont Industries has raised its 2026 sales and earnings guidance, a move that comes after an 18.6% six-month share rally tied to utility demand and grid modernization. The stock is up 15.3% year to date and has delivered a 1-year total shareholder return of 27.4%, while its 3-year and 5-year total shareholder returns of just over 2x reflect the payoff from the grid modernization theme. Against a last close of $474.64, the most followed valuation narrative pins fair value at about $624.50, implying the shares are 24% undervalued. Valmont's investments in capacity, automation, and AI are expected to unlock between $350 and $400 million in incremental annual revenue and support higher earnings and margins as the multi-year cycle unfolds. The bullish case leans heavily on infrastructure and agriculture cycles, so weaker project spending or sustained material cost pressure could quickly challenge that 24% discount story.

Energy Minister Eknat Prompan has unveiled a major energy restructuring plan, under which the government will reserve 10,000 megawatts of rooftop solar generating capacity specifically for the public, set at roughly 5 kilowatts per household, to spread the right across households nationwide. Under the new approach, the state will buy back surplus power and apply it as a discount on the same billing cycle's electricity bill. A 5-kilowatt system can generate about 600 to 700 units per month, worth roughly 2,000 baht or more, and the state will provide a subsidy of 50,000 baht, with the income from the generated power used to pay it off. The equipment is expected to be fully paid off in about 7 to 10 years. On cutting permitting steps, coordination will be handled solely through the distribution utilities, with a target of about 1 week for inspection and acceptance in self-consumption installations, and no more than 1 month in cases of selling power back. For the new Power Development Plan, or PDP, three goals are set: cleanest, most stable, and fairest. It targets raising the share of clean energy from the current level of just over 20% to close to 50% within 10 years, and no less than 65% in the long term, while reducing reliance on spot-market LNG in favor of long-term contracts, and opening the door to future technologies including hydrogen, geothermal, solid oxide fuel cells, and small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. Meanwhile, the public electricity cost that has been embedded in the power tariff structure for 30 to 40 years amounts to a burden of about 18 billion baht per year. The government has removed this burden from the structure and has already implemented a measure capping the first 200 units of household electricity at 3 baht per unit.

The equity and derivatives market strategist at InnovestX Research, InnovestX Securities, said efforts to push Thailand as a regional data center hub are taking clearer shape after the first meeting of the Data Center Business Policy Committee resolved to accelerate integration of data and legal provisions into a single dashboard, in order to set a clear industrial strategic framework within one month. The criteria define data centers using more than 2 MW of electricity as industrial businesses, set resource utilization fees to reflect true direct and indirect costs, and impose strict energy conditions to support Green Data Centers, including a separate electricity tariff category for the group, a mandatory clean energy share of no less than 60% to meet Net Zero goals, and tighter standards for backup power systems. Four subcommittees will be set up covering the economy, infrastructure, land and buildings, and the environment to draw up technical standards, and decisive measures are being prepared to suspend water and electricity allocation for projects not yet under construction if they fail the criteria. InnovestX assesses that these clearer policies will create significant positive ripple effects for two main industries. The first is clean energy, where the 60% minimum clean energy requirement will turn clean power from an option into a necessity, sharply driving real demand. The second is industrial estates, where classifying data centers as industrial businesses will draw foreign direct investment, or FDI, into leading estates equipped with smart grid networks and environmental management, leaving estates reliant on fossil fuels far behind. The investment strategy therefore recommends Selective Buy, focusing on accumulating leaders in these two main industries. For industrial estates, it favors companies with stable smart grid networks sufficient for Tier 3-4 data centers, joint ventures with multinational technology firms, and their own water recycling management systems, namely AMATA and WHA. For clean energy, it favors companies making progress on direct power purchase agreements, or Direct PPAs, with global hyperscalers, with high ESG scores and green certificates, and investing in battery energy storage systems, or BESS, to maintain the stability of electricity supplied to data centers, namely GULF, GPSC and BGRIM, as well as GUNKUL, a contractor for high-voltage transmission line systems.

Nvidia, Google and Emerald AI have launched the AI Energy Management Alliance, or AEMA, a coalition that dynamically manages the electricity use of data centers in response to grid conditions. Emerald AI founder and CEO Varun Sivaram said the alliance's founding members are joined by a cohort of 20 launch partners, including the AI lab Anthropic, the semiconductor firm Analog Devices, and the energy companies AES, NRG, Constellation, RWE and National Grid. Sivaram said Emerald AI, which was founded under two years ago, is building with Nvidia and Digital Realty the world's first from-the-ground-up power-flexible AI data center, a 100 megawatt facility in Manassas, Virginia, that comes online later this year. He said Google, one of the founding members, has already done a gigawatt of demand response for its data centers, while Emerald and Nvidia have completed six demonstrations around the world, in London, Phoenix and Virginia. Sivaram said the alliance is talking to the FERC commissioners, state regulators and the administration about a grand bargain in which flexible AI data centers act as good citizens to grids and communities in return for faster and larger connections to the power grid.

Alliant Energy is planning nearly $3 billion of infrastructure investment in 2026 and $13.4 billion through 2029, an approximately 12% compound annual growth rate in investment across generation, transmission and distribution. The company said the spending, including allowances for funds used during construction, is expected to support 5-7% earnings growth through 2029. Alliant has secured 3.4 gigawatts of contracted large-customer demand, which it expects to support nearly 60% growth in projected electricity demand by 2031, and it signed a 370-megawatt Iowa electric service agreement, with additional opportunities of 2-4 gigawatts progressing. The company recently received final permits to proceed with construction of the 720-megawatt Bobcat Energy Center in Marshalltown, Iowa, a natural gas-fired facility intended to add flexible generation capacity. For comparison, PPL Corporation plans to invest about $23 billion through 2029 to support approximately 10.3% average annual rate-base growth, while FirstEnergy plans $36 billion of capital investments through 2030 under its Energize365 program.

Meta Platforms raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to a range of $130 billion to $145 billion, including principal payments on finance leases, narrowed from a prior $125 billion to $145 billion range in its Q2 2026 report on July 29, 2026. The forward guidance nearly doubles Meta's full-year 2025 capex of $72.215 billion, and Q2 capital expenditures alone reached $31.1 billion, driven by servers, data centers, and network infrastructure. To fund the build, Meta ended Q2 with $90.3 billion in cash and marketable securities and $83.7 billion in debt, and announced a strategic venture with BlackRock to develop a one gigawatt data center in El Paso, Texas. CFO Susan Li said Meta is demand constrained today, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is receiving quite a number of offers at a meaningful premium over what we paid for the compute, framing direct compute sales as one leg of a portfolio that also includes APIs, business agents, productivity tools, and subscriptions. The strain is visible in the quarterly numbers: Q2 free cash flow was $784 million, down 91.31% year over year, and operating margin compressed to 31% from 43%, even as Q2 revenue reached $60.801 billion, up 27.96% year over year and above the $60.286 billion consensus, with advertising revenue of $59.4 billion, up 27%.

CleanSpark has signed a 20-year, $6.6 billion triple-net lease for its Sandersville, Georgia, site, a deal the company expects to generate $330 million in annual revenue. Chairman and CEO Matt Schultz said the site includes a fully energized 250-megawatt substation, that CleanSpark secured an additional 122 acres with community support, and that the tenant received short-term exclusivity for up to 885 additional megawatts in Texas, with the first data hall targeted for delivery in December 2027. The announcement came during an H.C. Wainwright panel where mining and AI infrastructure executives described a broad pivot from bitcoin operations toward AI colocation, cloud services and GPU-as-a-service. Core Scientific's Russell Cann said direct-liquid-cooled construction costs have climbed from roughly $4.5 million per megawatt for early projects to about $10 million to $10.5 million per megawatt for facilities turned on this year and $12 million to $13 million per megawatt for projects expected to start operating in 2027. Cann also said Core Scientific recently announced a roughly 500-megawatt agreement with AMD, with AMD holding rights to the next 2,000 megawatts across sites in Hunt County and Pecos, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma, under a 15-year triple-net lease at $125 per megawatt or a modified gross structure at $145 per megawatt. Executives pushed back on AI bubble concerns, with Cann noting roughly 5 gigawatts of rack space is delivered annually against approximately 15 gigawatts of annual chip demand, while cautioning that many power requests may be duplicative or unsupported by actual transmission, substations or fuel supply.

CoreWeave exited the second quarter of 2026 with $104.2 billion in revenue backlog, up 246% year over year, a figure that excludes more than $25 billion of net new customer commitments added in the early weeks of the third quarter. Management said more than half of the existing backlog was already tied to contracts where customer delivery had begun, and expects that proportion to exceed two-thirds of the second-quarter backlog by year-end. Quarterly revenues surged $2.6 billion, up 112% year over year, while adjusted operating income rose sequentially to $128 million, prompting the company to raise its 2026 revenue guidance to $12.4-$13.2 billion and adjusted operating income guidance to $960 million to $1.15 billion. CoreWeave also lifted its expected year-end annualized run-rate revenues to $18.5-$19.5 billion, citing the long-term nature and attractive margins of contracted backlog. Supporting that backlog is capital-intensive buildout: capex was $9.4 billion, construction in progress rose sequentially to $11.9 billion, operating expenses reached $2.6 billion including $165 million in stock-based compensation, and interest expense hit $640 million versus $267 million a year earlier, with interest expense expected to climb to $860-$940 million in the current quarter. At the end of the second quarter CoreWeave had 1.5 gigawatts of active power after adding nearly 500 megawatts during the quarter, plus 3.7 gigawatts of contracted power, which management said has since risen to 4.2 gigawatts toward a goal of at least 8 gigawatts by 2030, while competition intensifies from Nebius and Microsoft.

The National Energy Policy Committee has approved a measure to support rooftop solar installation for households at 50,000 baht per household and to expand the target for purchasing electricity from solar power from 5,000 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts. The proposal will be submitted to the Cabinet meeting on September 22, 2026. Deputy Interior Minister Polpree Suwanchavi revealed that Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul will sign the Interior Ministry's letter under the project and plans to present it to the subcommittee screening loan spending under the 400-billion-baht emergency decree for consideration and approval within 15 days, or as soon as 3 to 5 days from now, before submitting it to the main screening committee chaired by Lavaron Sangsnit, Permanent Secretary of the Finance Ministry. The matter will then be forwarded to Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas to present to the Cabinet within the next two weeks. If the Cabinet approves, the registration system will open for the public to claim their entitlements within two days afterward. As for progress on setting electricity rate criteria for data center businesses, the Energy Regulatory Commission is finalizing the categorization of electricity rates, with Ekniti instructing that the details be completed by the end of September 2026.

BMI, a unit of Fitch Solutions, said on Thursday 17 September that capacity constraints across Asia's power grid systems are tightening steadily, as rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence technology and data centres puts heavy pressure on power systems. In a report, BMI Country Risk and Industry Research said the firm had raised its electricity consumption forecasts for several markets, including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, driven by data centre investment and the expansion of AI computing workloads. It expects electricity consumption to grow at an average annual rate of 2.9% in Thailand, 3.3% in Malaysia and 5.6% in Vietnam over the next 10 years. The report also said tighter regulation in Thailand, Malaysia and Australia is limiting growth in demand for power connected to transmission systems, and regulators are expected to keep scrutiny strict to protect grid stability. BMI also expects a recovery in thermal power plants, particularly in emerging markets, as policymakers turn to dispatchable generating capacity amid strong demand and tightening grid conditions.

The National Energy Policy Committee, or NEPC, at its 3/2569 meeting approved expanding the framework for promoting public solar power from an initial proposal of 5,000 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts, or roughly 1 million households. The meeting was chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas. Lalida Perdviwattana, deputy spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, disclosed that power purchases will use a Net Billing system, letting people consume the electricity they generate themselves first and then sell the surplus into the grid at 2.20 baht per unit, with the amount offered for sale capped at no more than 5 kilowatts per meter. The purchase contract period will also be extended from 10 years to 20 years to align with the service life of solar panels. The additional power purchase framework covers the period from 2569 to 2571 and expands installation formats from the previous focus on rooftop solar to allow ground-mounted and floating installations for households as well. The meeting also assigned the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Interior and the three electricity authorities to complete plans for supporting infrastructure within one month, covering power generation forecasting, real-time data monitoring, control of transmission and distribution systems, and battery energy storage systems. It also directed the Metropolitan Electricity Authority and the Provincial Electricity Authority to link data from smart meters with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, and assigned the Ministry of Industry to draw up a recycling plan for solar panels and batteries. In addition, the NEPC approved a policy direction to reduce the electricity burden for the September to December 2569 period by holding the retail Ft charge at 16.23 satang per unit.

VINCI unit VINCI Energies has secured a multi-year contract to maintain a major electricity distribution network in Sweden. The agreement covers long term upkeep of critical grid assets and expands VINCI Energies' operational presence in the Nordic power infrastructure market. The contract includes extension options that could lengthen the partnership and increase VINCI Energies' role in Sweden's electricity distribution system. Vinci is a €62.6b construction group that combines concessions, energy services and large scale infrastructure projects, and the Swedish grid work plugs directly into its wider energy contracting activity across Europe rather than being a one off contract win. For investors, the deal reinforces the energy transition and recurring services catalyst in Vinci's narrative rather than its more cyclical transport concessions, which recently saw declines in VINCI Autoroutes intercity traffic and softer airport movements for the year to date in 2026.

On September 18, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and eight other ministries jointly released the 15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Pharmaceutical Industry, proposing that by 2030, operating revenue of pharmaceutical enterprises above designated size will exceed 3.5 trillion yuan, with the innovative drug industry scale growing at an average annual rate of over 20%, and the number of products with global annual sales exceeding 1 billion US dollars reaching more than five. Boosted by this news, the A-share innovative drug sector rose at the open, with Hongbo Pharmaceutical hitting the 20% daily limit, Biopuxaisi rising more than 12%, and Zhendong Pharmaceutical, Baike Biotech, Hualan Co., and Chengdu Lead following higher. On the same day, the AI pharmaceutical concept strengthened again, with Berry Genomics and Hefu China hitting the daily limit, after Novo Nordisk and Anthropic announced a partnership to use Anthropic's AI models and Claude Science to support drug discovery and development. The power grid equipment sector moved higher, with Sun Cable, Zhongdian Xinlong, and Zhongchao Holdings quickly hitting the daily limit; market analysts noted that improving power industry conditions are driving demand for upstream power equipment, and expanding grid infrastructure orders are supporting steady growth in demand for transmission and distribution and smart distribution equipment. The CPO concept fluctuated higher, with Mingpu Guangci hitting the daily limit, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said chip sales are expected to double from current annual levels by 2027; the tourism concept also strengthened, with Shaanxi Tourism hitting the daily limit, as tourism platform data showed flight bookings for this year's Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day period rose 44% year-on-year.

The government is considering expanding the One Million Solar Roofs programme from 1 million households to 1.5 million households, while keeping the subsidy at 50,000 baht per household and the quota at 500MW as before, under a 200 billion baht envelope set by the Emergency Decree on Promoting the Energy Transition. If expanded to 1.5 million households, the total budget required would be about 75 billion baht, which remains within the 200 billion baht ceiling, and the proposal is currently under review by the Ministry of Interior. The Research team at Bualuang Securities said the expansion is a positive factor for the power plant sector, especially the EPC business and equipment sales, as well as investment in upgrading the power grid system, which is likely to increase. GUNKUL benefits directly from construction work and equipment sales, with a backlog of such work of roughly 4.2 to 4.5 billion baht. Meanwhile, funding through On-bill Financing from GSB, GHB and BAAC helps reduce the constraint of upfront investment, and loan approval times have fallen from as long as one year to about 7 to 30 days. GPSC and BGRIM benefit more indirectly, through investments related to the grid system and energy storage systems. GULF is expected not to be significantly affected, because the subsidy comes from the emergency decree and is not passed through costs via electricity bills or the Ft tariff, so it does not pressure margins on existing PPAs.

Crusoe announced the initial closing of its anticipated $3.9 billion Series F funding round at a $30.9 billion post-money valuation. The oversubscribed round was co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, with backing from new and existing investors including Founders Fund, GIC, NVIDIA, Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures, and TPG. The company said the capital will help it scale existing programs and build out its own AI factories, from large-scale vertically-integrated campuses to modular Crusoe Spark units, fueling growth of Crusoe Cloud. Crusoe reported over $140 billion in total contracted value across its vertically-integrated platform and more than 6 GW of gross contracted capacity across data centers and cloud, including 1 GW of gross capacity delivered and operational today. The company also cited 20x-plus year-over-year growth in Crusoe Cloud bookings year to date and over $100 million in contracted ARR for Crusoe Managed Inference, launched late last year.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at a Scotland tech gathering that the company's chip sales in 2027 are projected to roughly double from 2026, echoing management's August 26, 2026 earnings call guidance for about 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028. The doubling is being driven by the Vera Rubin platform, which entered full production alongside continued Blackwell deployment and is expected to be the fastest product ramp in Nvidia's history, with per-gigawatt revenue opportunity rising to roughly $40 billion from $25 billion on Blackwell. Nvidia's supply obligations swelled to $279.0 billion, largely tied to memory procurement for Vera Rubin, while guarantee obligations for AI cloud partners are capped at $108.5 billion and financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR are expected to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital for AI infrastructure. Sovereign and enterprise AI is growing 100% a year, with sovereign AI revenue up 35% sequentially and more than tripling year over year, and neocloud partners expected to exit the year with eight gigawatts of installed capacity versus roughly three gigawatts at the end of 2025. Consensus EPS for the fiscal year ending January 2028 has climbed from $12.67 ninety days ago to $15.57 today, with 39 upward revisions in the past 30 days and zero cuts, on revenue now pegged at roughly $678 billion.

Vertiv reported that product revenues rose 22% year over year to $2.65 billion in the second quarter of 2026, accounting for about 81% of total sales, while total revenues climbed 24% to $3.27 billion. Regionally, Americas sales increased 29% to $2.07 billion and APAC rose 29% to $720 million, while EMEA returned to 2% reported growth. The company is adding capacity across the Americas, Malaysia and EMEA and investing in advanced thermal systems, next-generation power architectures and converged infrastructure, including an 800-volt DC roadmap and liquid-cooling products. For the third quarter of 2026, management expects $3.65-$3.85 billion in sales and 34%-36% organic growth, including high-30s organic growth in the Americas and APAC and mid-teens growth in EMEA. Vertiv faces intensifying competition from Super Micro Computer, which in July 2026 expanded its DCBBS liquid-cooling portfolio with 10 rear-door heat exchangers, and from Amphenol, whose IT datacom segment represented about 43% of sales and grew 63% organically year over year in the second quarter of 2026.

Quanta Services raised its full-year earnings guidance after first-quarter results showed broad-based acceleration across its business, according to Reaves W H & Co Inc's second-quarter 2026 investor letter. The letter said management also reaffirmed its expectation to double earnings by 2030. Reaves Long Term Value Wrap Strategy reported a 10.55% increase for the quarter, outperforming the MSCI USA Infrastructure Index's 6.31% decline, with cash distributions up 6.7% compared to Q2 2025. Quanta, described as the largest specialty utility solutions provider, remains a primary bottleneck through which industry capital spending must flow to support power demand growth, data center energization timelines and grid reliability investment. Quanta closed at $619.28 per share on September 16, 2026, down 5.67% over the past month but up 59.97% over the past year, with a market capitalization of $93.1 billion and a 52-week range of $376.07 to $788.75.

Utility bills rose faster than overall inflation over the summer, according to a Bank of America report, and bill pressure is expected to persist for some time. In August, the average utility bill price increased 5.3% year over year, outpacing the 4% rise in electricity and piped gas prices, following the hottest summer on record in the US. Energy bills accounted for roughly 3% of total household spending as of 2024. Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. saw the highest increases in energy costs from June to August of this year, with utility bills in those cities rising 10% year over year, while bills declined in San Jose, Orlando, and Tampa. The US Energy Information Administration's August 2026 short-term energy outlook projects a 4% increase in commercial and industrial electricity consumption, which Bank of America said will likely require ongoing investment in grid capacity and power generation, with some costs potentially passed on to consumers. Bank of America noted some near-term relief may be on the horizon due to the El Niño weather pattern, which could lower energy bills through reduced heating demand, though stormy weather in the southern US could lead households to spend more on repairs and maintenance instead.

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Ratepayer Protection Act by a vote of 417 to 3, aiming to shield the public from electricity bill increases that could stem from the expansion of data centers driven by the artificial intelligence race. The bill now heads to the Senate for further consideration. Republican Representative Gabe Evans of Colorado introduced the bill. Its core provision requires technology companies to bear the cost of new energy infrastructure built to serve data centers, rather than shifting that burden onto consumers. It encourages state utility regulators to set standards requiring high-volume electricity customers, including large data centers, to cover the costs of adding new generating capacity. US House Speaker Mike Johnson said the Ratepayer Protection Act will help ensure American households do not have to shoulder the costs of expanding AI infrastructure or face higher energy costs. The International Energy Agency estimated in 2025 that electricity consumption by data centers in the United States could more than double its 2024 level by the end of this decade, while other assessments indicate that data center electricity use could account for more than 10% of US power demand by 2030.

The Energy Policy and Planning Office (EPPO) reported that primary commercial energy consumption in the first six months of 2026 stood at approximately 2,062 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day, up 0.9% from the same period a year earlier, in line with Thailand's economic growth of 2.4%. Electricity use rose 6.0% and natural gas use rose 7.8%, while finished oil consumption fell 0.8% and coal and lignite fell 16.5%. Cumulative registrations of battery electric vehicles as of June 2026 stood at 491,496 units, up 66% from 296,813 units in June 2025, driving electricity use at charging stations up 87.1%. Carbon dioxide emissions from total energy use amounted to 121.0 million tonnes, down 0.4%. Wattanapong Kurovat, director of the EPPO, said the office expects the country's primary energy demand for all of 2026 to be 2,042 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day, up 1.4% from 2025, when it fell 1.6%. He added that the situation still requires monitoring, including conflict in the Middle East, uncertainty over United States trade measures, and weather factors.

GUNKUL executives explained at a Virtual Conference hosted by Bualuang Securities that the PDP2026 plan is still in its Public Hearing phase in September 2026, with a target to submit it to the Cabinet in November or by the end of this year at the latest. As for the Community Solar scheme, auction results are expected by late 2026, PPA signing in mid-2027, and investment recognition beginning in 2028. Meanwhile, the Direct PPA framework is expected to become clear by the end of 2026. The major auction rounds under PDP2026, covering 2,700MW of wind and 24,000MW of solar, are likely to take clearer shape in 2027, with the auction expected to open around mid-year, the first batch of PPAs signed in 3Q27, and power delivery beginning in 2029-30. Executives confirmed the company's historical auction win share of about 10%, in line with EPC assumptions. The company also continues to focus on smart meters and 230-500kV high-voltage grid upgrade work, where fewer than 10 competitors operate, supporting the Grid Modernization/EEC Fast-track assumption of 2.7 billion baht per year. On Data Centers, regulations must still be awaited before auctions open, with investment estimated at about 5-6 million US dollars per MW, excluding GPU and electrical/EPC system work, which accounts for 10-15% of total investment. Current staffing can support up to 500MW of private-sector Data Center work. In the short term, 3Q26 remains strong, with wind power generation in just July and August matching the whole of 3Q25, boosting the profit share from the Wind JV, expected to rise to 327 million baht from 132 million baht in 2Q26. Core profit in 3Q26 is expected at 618 million baht, up 35% year-on-year and 9% quarter-on-quarter, with a chance of setting a new high. The EPC backlog stands at 5.0 billion baht, with about 1.6 billion baht expected to be recognized in 3Q26. The recommendation remains Buy with a target price of 6.50 baht, and the utilities sector weighting remains Overweight.

President Donald Trump compared AI data centers to the oil boom of the next 20 to 25 years at the All-In Summit, arguing they are making states and communities wealthy, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang agreed with the broader thesis, saying roughly $400 billion in venture financing has flowed into AI companies over the past six months. Huang, whose net worth is estimated at about $183 billion, described AI as a new industrial revolution requiring not just chips but manufacturing, electricity and physical infrastructure. The buildout is drawing a backlash, however: a single large AI data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes, and the World Resources Institute estimates data centers could account for as much as 12% of U.S. electricity consumption by 2028. Last year alone saw over $60 billion in rate increases, electricity prices rose 11.5% in 2025, and data centers reportedly create few lasting jobs, often fewer than 150 people and sometimes just 25, once construction ends. Elon Musk's xAI and other tech companies currently face major federal and local lawsuits over air pollution, noise and unpermitted power equipment at AI data center sites, while new builds in states like California have clustered near lower-income communities.

Nvidia is increasingly acting as what Chamath Palihapitiya called the "bank of AI," working across suppliers, infrastructure providers and financing partners to clear bottlenecks before they constrain AI deployment, Jensen Huang said at the All-In Summit. Huang described AI as a "new industrial revolution" that requires manufacturing, electricity, internet infrastructure and physical data-center capacity to scale together, not just GPUs. He said roughly $400 billion in venture financing flowed into AI companies over six months, creating jobs and massive demand for compute, which in turn drives demand for data centers. Nvidia has increasingly worked with financial institutions and other ecosystem players to make AI compute an investable, financeable asset, a strategy that turns the company into an ecosystem enabler: help customers secure capital, power and infrastructure, and Nvidia keeps supplying the computing engine underneath them. For investors, that could make Nvidia's AI opportunity considerably broader than its semiconductor market share, since the biggest constraint on AI spending may eventually be capital and infrastructure rather than demand for GPUs.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said hyperscalers are "always almost wrong" on AI capacity planning because they set infrastructure plans once a year while demand shifts far faster, and he is pushing a network of nimble regional clouds as the fix. Speaking at the All-In Summit, Huang said Nvidia would be happy with five hyperscalers but argued the industry ultimately needs 50, 100 or even 1,000 neoclouds, since regional providers can move quickly to secure land, power and existing facilities that are harder for companies operating from Silicon Valley or Seattle to coordinate globally. Nvidia is building what Huang described as a large-scale distributed network of companies securing those critical resources, and he pointed to activity in Australia and Southeast Asia where Nvidia is helping bring additional gigawatts of capacity online through regional cloud partners. The strategy matters for Nvidia because it does not need every AI workload to run through a handful of hyperscalers if it can help create hundreds of smaller customers that collectively consume massive amounts of Nvidia hardware. It also reinforces a broader shift in the AI infrastructure trade, where the bottleneck is increasingly not who has the best chips but who can secure the electricity, land and data center capacity needed to deploy them.

Asadej Kongsiri, Director and Manager of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, is pressing ahead with the JUMP+ project, which now has 142 listed companies participating, aiming to upgrade businesses through a three-year plan covering strategy, governance, greenhouse gas management, and investor communication. The JUMP+ Investor Day 2026 on 26 September will be a stage for 56 companies to present their business plans directly to investors. On energy, Pongpol Yodmuangcharoen, spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy, disclosed that electricity requests from Data Centers have surged to 35 gigawatts, close to the country's peak power demand of 40 gigawatts. The government plans to assess Data Center demand in the 2026 Power Development Plan at 8.8 gigawatts, shift the power security criterion from reserve margin to the LOLE index, and upgrade the grid to a Two-way Dynamic Grid to accommodate rooftop solar, which is expected to add more than 5,000 megawatts of capacity. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand will need a budget of about 35,000 million baht, particularly for the EEC area. Meanwhile, Vikrom Kromadit, Chief Executive Officer of Amata Corporation Public Company Limited, or AMATA, said Chinese investors are looking at Thailand as a production base for export. In one case, Michael Yao, President of Homa Appliances (Thailand) Company Limited, led Homa to invest more than 3,100 million baht in the Amata Chonburi industrial estate, targeting production of 1.5 million units per year, creating export value of 12,000 million baht per year, and employing up to 3,000 people, while increasing the use of Thai components to 50-60%. On the capital market, Rawin Boonyanusasna, an executive in the money and capital markets business at Krungthai Bank, has joined with Gulf Development Public Company Limited, or GULF, to offer digital debentures rated AA-/Stable by TRIS Rating. They can be invested through a wallet on the Paotang app, starting at 1,000 baht, with 24-hour secondary market trading. Subscription opens from 19-21 October 2026, or until the full amount is taken, allocated on a first come, first served basis. Meanwhile, Chai Eamsiri, Chief Executive Officer of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited, or THAI, confirmed there will be no further flight cuts even though jet fuel prices have surged above 160 dollars per barrel, with fuel costs accounting for about 40% of total costs. Second-quarter net profit was 1,528 million baht, down 87% year on year, but the airline remains confident of meeting its 2026 revenue target of 200,000 million baht, and will add flights to Europe and Asia to take delivery of new aircraft. The 10,000 million baht MRO facility at U-Tapao is still awaiting approval, and applications for a new CEO are open until 27 September. Finally, Santipol Jenwatanapaisal, Chief Executive Officer of Jenkongklai Public Company Limited, or JPARK, launched GJ PARK, a full-service parking building at Kanchanaphisek Medical Center, with an investment of 590 million baht, accommodating at least 1,000 cars. Revenue is expected to be at least 60 million baht per year, with recognition beginning in the third quarter of 2026. The company also plans to develop another 3-4 locations and to raise funds by injecting assets into a REIT within 2029, targeting revenue growth of 20-30% in 2026 and reaching 1,000 million baht in 2028.

GE Vernova told the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference that its total order backlog will surpass $200 billion in early 2027, sending the shares up 4.5% in the afternoon session. Management said the backlog reached $176 billion in the second quarter of 2026, driven by stronger pricing, higher gas-turbine production run rates, and more than $5 billion in electrification orders from data centers in the first half of the year. Chief Executive Officer Scott Strazik pointed to robust demand visibility and a planned 50% increase in gas power capacity in the current year. The company also projected it will secure $100 billion in cumulative future services revenue by the end of 2027, and said upcoming financial reports will carry further detail on equipment margins and backlog ahead of its spring 2027 capital markets day. The shares closed at $926.75, up 5% from the previous close.

Nvidia launched the AI Energy Management Alliance with Google and Emerald AI on Wednesday, targeting electricity, one of AI's biggest physical bottlenecks. Nvidia shares gained approximately 0.9% to $214.08. The alliance aims to make data centers behave more like flexible grid assets, shifting computing workloads, tapping stored energy or cutting electricity demand when the grid comes under pressure, and its framework is designed to measure how quickly facilities can respond, how long that flexibility lasts, how predictable it is and how operators behave during emergencies. If utilities and grid operators can trust those commitments, hyperscale projects could face fewer interconnection roadblocks and potentially require less incremental infrastructure before coming online. Power availability is increasingly a constraint on AI infrastructure deployment, and data-center revenue reached $89 billion, roughly 92.5% of Nvidia's latest quarterly sales, so delays in energizing new facilities can eventually become delays in installing Nvidia systems.

ISO New England has selected Eversource's joint Transmission Initiative Down East project as the preferred longer-term transmission solution in its competitive solicitation process. The TIDE project would expand transmission capacity between Maine and New Hampshire, easing regional congestion and supporting affordability, and could integrate up to 1,200 megawatts of future onshore wind generation in northern New England. According to ISO New England's analysis, TIDE is projected to deliver a more than 2-to-1 cost-benefit ratio, including $1.42 billion in production cost and congestion savings, $1.30 billion in avoided capital investment, and $694 million in avoided transmission investment. Eversource's portion centers on upgrades and replacement within existing rights-of-way in New Hampshire, including a new 18-mile, 345 kilovolt line, a rebuild of an existing 345 kV line from a two-pole, H-frame design to a single-pole, reconductoring of another existing 345 kV line, and voltage and power quality equipment, with additional work in Maine and Massachusetts. The project still requires engineering, environmental, permitting and regulatory reviews, with construction anticipated to begin in 2029 pending all state and regulatory approvals.

Hitachi, Ltd. and Mission Critical Group announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding establishing a strategic partnership focused on joint development of solutions to expand Hitachi's HMAX Data Center portfolio, along with cross-selling of energy solutions and products. The partnership will pursue three main areas: delivery of end-to-end energy solutions spanning high-, medium-, and low-voltage systems, with Hitachi Energy and MCG combining their power infrastructure technologies for data center operators; joint development and deployment of solutions for HMAX Data Center portfolio expansion, integrating Hitachi's digital technologies including data collection and AI analytics into MCG's modular power equipment; and introduction of solutions to advance MCG's modular manufacturing expertise through Hitachi Group digital and automation solutions including HMAX Industry. The companies said the modular data center market is growing at an annual rate of about 20 percent, driven by AI adoption and extended lead times for electrical equipment. Jun Taniguchi, Senior Vice President and Executive Officer and CEO of the Strategic SIB Business Unit at Hitachi, said MCG is an ideal partner with a broad customer base ranging from hyperscalers to colocation providers. Jeff Drees, CEO of Mission Critical Group, said combining Hitachi's global energy and digital capabilities with MCG's modular power expertise can accelerate time-to-power. MCG operates more than 18 manufacturing facilities in the United States.

Guggenheim analyst Joseph Osha raised his price target on GE Vernova to a Street-high $1,450 from $1,300, implying roughly 64% upside from the stock's current $882.17, even as shares have given back their entire post-earnings surge. GE Vernova has fallen 17.03% over the past month and 9.18% in the past week, and is down 10.38% since its July 22, 2026 second-quarter report, leaving it about 26% below its 52-week high of $1,195.94. The Q2 results themselves were strong: revenue of $11.10B, up 21.8% year over year, orders of $24.20B, an $176B backlog, and $5.10B in quarterly free cash flow, with management raising full-year free cash flow guidance to $11.5B to $12.5B from $6.5B to $7.5B. Osha's call rests on hyperscaler demand for transformers and turbines, margin expansion from a higher-priced backlog, and long-term service agreements on the growing HA turbine fleet; GE Vernova signed 20 gigawatts of gas power orders in Q2 alone, bringing contracted capacity to 116 gigawatts, and first-half data center orders topped $5 billion, more than double all of 2025. Among power peers, Eaton trades at $392.26 against a $478.17 consensus target for about 22% implied upside, while Constellation Energy trades at $259.89 versus $348.30 for roughly 34%, leaving GE Vernova with the deepest discount and largest Street-high of the group.