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Brian Boland was CFO at utility-scale energy developer BrightNight when he was approached by Chris James, the founder of investment firm Engine No. 1, in early 2025. James had procured four gigawatts of gas turbines from GE Vernova two years earlier, before energy demand started to skyrocket and the sector ran headlong into a turbine crunch.
“He saw where the puck was going, and realized that the U.S. had been massively underinvesting in its electrical supply chain, particularly the thermal and gas turbine side,” Boland told Latitude Media.
Those turbines became the cornerstone of Joulent, an energy developer building power plants for large-scale new industrial loads, and AI data centers specifically. Boland left BrightNight to be Joulent’s CFO and head of strategy while the company was being incubated by Engine No. 1.
On June 22, 2026, Joulent emerged from stealth, spinning out of Engine No. 1 and announcing Project Kilby, a West Texas gas-powered facility Joulent is developing through a 50-50 joint venture with Chevron. Kilby aims to deliver 2.67 GW of power to a co-located data center, via a 20-year power purchase agreement Microsoft signed with Energy Forge One, a Chevron subsidiary. Engine No. 1 and Chevron originally announced a partnership to build gas generation for data centers in January 2025.
