Matthew Tuttle
CEO & CIO of Tuttle Capital Management, Publisher of Daily H.E.A.T.
Turbine and generation capacity, not chips or grid interconnect queues, is the real AI bottleneck in 2026, which favors gas turbine makers GE Vernova, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Oilfield services company SLB partnering with Liberty Energy on data center power infrastructure shows the picks-and-shovels trade has moved down another layer. x.comÂ
The AI power story is a gas turbine OEM trade, not a gas or uranium trade. GE Vernova, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are the only three companies that can sell turbine delivery slots, their backlogs are booked into 2029-2030, and hyperscalers will pay any price for those slots. Per @PZeniewski, the US leads a quarter-century high in gas-fired power investment, much of it for data centers, creating a global turbine supply crunch. x.comÂ
GE Vernova's turbines and grid equipment make it a clear winner from the AI data-center power crunch. Q3 equipment sales rose 42%, total revenue 27% and operating income 281% as margins expanded. Grade: A. x.comÂ
AI's electricity shortfall creates a massive opportunity for companies solving the power bottleneck. Morgan Stanley estimates a 32 GW US data-center power shortfall by 2028. Constellation Energy and Vistra are nuclear names, Bloom Energy in fuel cells, GE Vernova in power generation and Eaton in grid infrastructure. x.comÂ
Power demand will keep growing exponentially as AI models and data centers get larger, even after the AI hardware rotation slows, creating an AI power supercycle across four layers. Fuel: EQT, Kinder Morgan, Williams, Energy Transfer. Onsite power, the near-term bottleneck fix: Bloom Energy, GE Vernova, Caterpillar, Cummins, Kodiak Gas Services, T1 Energy. Grid: Eaton, Quanta, Vertiv, Hubbell, nVent, Emerson. Nuclear baseload: Oklo, NuScale, Nano Nuclear, Constellation, Vistra, BWX Technologies. … Show more
AI data centers need cooling, electricity and transmission, sustaining the case for Vertiv, GE Vernova and Quanta Services. Vertiv's sales rose 26% in the past year; its systems cool AI chips. GE Vernova is the go-to power trade for its gas turbines. Quanta builds the lines to data centers and has a record $53B backlog. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Energy infrastructure looks like the next memory trade, as the AI race shifts from software to energy. China produces about three times as much energy as the US, and Musk and Jensen Huang said every 5GW of new energy adds about 1% to US GDP. AI needs power, cooling and infrastructure, so the companies enabling the buildout, from Vistra, Constellation and GE Vernova to Bloom Energy, Vertiv, BWXT, Cameco, Enphase and Tesla, are worth accumulating on weakness. x.com x.comÂ
GE Vernova and the other big turbine makers now behave like memory makers, restricting output and raising prices rather than repeating their 1990s-2000s boom-bust cycle. That discipline has been great for their stocks, and GE Vernova is sold out until 2030. Unlike memory buyers, though, power customers have alternatives, so the congested turbine backlog leaves the field ripe for disruption by behind-the-meter generation. x.comÂ
Grid suppliers are winning the next AI bottleneck, because power must reach data centers through transformers, substations, switchgear and transmission the grid lacks. Transformer lead times stretched from 24 months in 2019 to five years, per HSBC, and PJM got 220 GW of generation applications by April 2026 versus 2.1 GW connected in 2025. The White House designated switchgear and substations defense-essential. Forgent, Eaton, Powell, Hubbell, nVent, Quanta, MYR, AMSC, GE Vernova and Itron fit. … Show more
Per Truist, AI data center capacity grows from 24GW to 100GW by 2030, and every watt must be converted, stored and cooled before a GPU runs, paying firms between grid and chip. DC-DC conversion is the layer to watch, as rising density makes each efficiency point worth more: Monolithic Power, Vicor, Infineon, TI, Analog Devices, Renesas, onsemi. Panasonic appears in six layers and Delta in four, paid more than once per rack. Eaton, Vertiv, GE Vernova, Schneider and ABB bring power in. x.comÂ
AI data centers are hitting a power wall, which favors builders of heavy power and cooling hardware over chipmakers alone. Co-packaged optics let racks pack far more compute, but optical clusters draw enormous current, so new campuses need gigawatts the grid cannot supply, and utility hookups take 5-10 years. Vertiv supplies liquid cooling, Eaton and Powell switchgear and transformers, GE Vernova gas turbines for on-site power, and Bloom Energy fuel cells that skip the grid. x.comÂ
Electricity is a clear bottleneck for AI, favoring AI-focused power and data-center infrastructure names over residential utilities. The US could be short 107 GW to power data centers through 2029, while China adds capacity year after year. Medium-term preferences are Cipher, Hut 8, Riot, TeraWulf, Galaxy, Equinix, Bloom Energy, Solaris, Vistra, GE Vernova, INIO, Williams, Liberty Energy, EROC and Cummins. x.com x.comÂ
