Utility stocks led the gainers as investors seek essential bread and butter stocks like electricity, water and gas. Utilities are also garnering interest because of the massive power demands of AI focused data centers.
The U.S.'s largest utilities and developers of data centers have signed on to President Trump's pledge to pay more for the electricity needed to run artificial-intelligence models, hoping to quell a backlash that has fueled protests and political proposals to halt the AI boom. NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Equinix and Digital Realty are among the nearly 200 entities committing to the president's promise aimed at ensuring AI's energy consumption doesn't push up electric bills for consumers across the U.S., according to a White House list of signatories obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Southern Company's Georgia Power will provide electric service to OpenAI's planned data center project in Effingham County, Ga., under a long-term agreement that includes one of the country's largest single-site demand response commitments. OpenAI says it will invest $20 billion in the first phase of the project, which is expected to create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in local investment.
