Wall Street giants to make $50 billion bet on AI and power projects
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. KKR and Energy Capital Partners have agreed to invest a combined $50 billion in data-center and power-generation projects to support the development of artificial intelligence. The investment is a bet on AI’s huge energy needs and the mounting stress it is putting on the U.S.
power grid. Much of it will be invested over the next four years, the companies said. KKR, one of the world’s largest investment companies, and Energy Capital Partners, a private-equity firm, have each been spending heavily on the infrastructure underpinning the AI boom.
The companies said they are now working together with large tech companies to accelerate their access to electricity, which has become constrained in parts of the U.S. as data-center developers compete for power sources and access to the grid. “The capital needs are huge, and one of the big bottlenecks—maybe the bottleneck—is electricity availability," ECP founder and senior partner Doug Kimmelman said.
ECP owns companies that operate conventional power plants as well as renewables, including Calpine, one of the country’s largest power generators. ECP recently expanded its portfolio of natural-gas-fired plants, which Kimmelman said will be critical in supplying round-the-clock power to data centers. He said he anticipates making additional investments in gas while exploring ways to reduce carbon emissions with renewables or developing technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration.
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