The AI trade is no longer just about GPUs and memory. The market is starting to focus on the less glamorous layer underneath the hype: who can actually deliver electricity, grid connection, and power quality fast enough for the next wave of data centers. That is why the conversation is widening from chip names into transformers, switchgear, substations, and on-site power systems.
The U.S. macro backdrop is giving that trade fresh urgency. Reuters, citing the U.S. Energy Information Administration on June 9, said U.S. power consumption is expected to hit record highs in both 2026 and 2027 as demand from AI, crypto and broader electrification rises. EIA’s own May 19 data-center note already pointed in the same direction, showing server power use climbing materially across the commercial building stock. In other words, this is no longer a theoretical future bottleneck. It is entering the short-term power forecast.
Europe is offering a practical template for how the market may monetize that constraint. In a late-May Siemens Energy feature, the company said Start Campus is building the 1.2 GW SINES Data Campus in Portugal for AI, cloud and high-performance workloads, with Siemens supplying transformers, substations and Blue gas-insulated switchgear. Traders should pay attention to that detail. Once hyperscale capex starts talking more about interconnection hardware than just compute hardware, the listed beneficiaries broaden quickly.
Japan’s angle is becoming more interesting than the usual ‘supporting supplier’ label suggests. Hitachi’s recently published 2026 R&D material said rising generative-AI demand is already causing longer delays to connect data centers to the grid, and described a TEPCO Power Grid collaboration that shifts workloads across geographically separated sites to stabilize the system. Hitachi also announced on May 12 that it is working with X LABS on behind-the-meter energy parks for GW-scale AI data centers in North America. That tells me Japanese industrials are not just selling parts into the AI trade. They are moving toward system architecture and power orchestration.
Korea is pushing into the same lane from the equipment side. LS Electric said on April 29 it won a KRW 300 billion-scale big-tech data-center power-solutions project tied to Bloom Energy, and in April promoted DC-centered data-center power equipment for North America. HD Hyundai Electric separately said on May 7 that it signed a KRW 173 billion contract for 765kV ultra-high-voltage transformers and reactors in the U.S. grid market while highlighting next-generation switchgear and breakers. That matters because Korea is increasingly positioned as a supplier of the electrical backbone, not just a consumer of the AI narrative.
My view is that this is one of the cleaner second-order AI trades in the market. The first wave rewarded compute scarcity. The next wave may reward the boring companies that keep AI campuses from sitting half-built behind an interconnection queue. The bullish case is that grid bottlenecks extend pricing power for electrical-equipment and power-management names longer than the market expects. The bearish case is that utilities, permitting and procurement cycles stay slow enough to delay revenue recognition even when order books look strong. Either way, traders are right to stop treating power infrastructure as background noise.
Risk notice: This article is market commentary for information only, not personalized investment advice. Power-infrastructure, industrial and AI-linked trades can be volatile, and project timing, regulation, utility approvals, commodity costs and customer capex changes can reverse sentiment quickly.
Sources:
Reuters via TradingView: U.S. power use to beat record highs in 2026 and 2027 as AI use surges
EIA: Data center server energy use grows across the commercial building stock
Siemens Energy: The race to connect data centers to the grid
Hitachi Technology 2026: Grid-linked energy management utilizing multiple data centers
Hitachi: Energy parks for GW-scale AI data centers in North America
LS Electric: KRW 300 billion-scale big-tech data-center power solutions project
LS Electric: Data Center World 2026 North America push
HD Hyundai Electric: IEEE PES T&D 2026 U.S. grid-equipment contract and roadmap
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