The artificial intelligence boom has created an era of unprecedented uncertainty in the global economy. Large language models are evolving as quickly as they are being integrated, creating a major headache for anyone trying to project their future impact or even their current energy footprint. But while we don’t know exactly how much energy will be needed to power the tech sector in coming years, we do know that it will be a whole lot, and the market is already reacting accordingly.
“Energy companies are raising money at IPO at their fastest pace this century, taking advantage of investors’ hunt for new ways to bet on the boom in power-intensive AI data centres,” states a recent report from the Financial Times. In the first half of this year, the money raised in initial public offerings for energy startups was the highest since 1999, when the first dot-com boom spurred a similar gold rush. And the rate of growth is staggering: in 2025, energy companies raised a total of $4.3 billion for the entire year. The total for 2026 is already at $12.6 billion, and we still have another half year to go.
“Investors started by buying AI-linked names like Nvidia. Then they said, ‘hold on, every chip needs energy to power it’,” RBC clean energy analyst Chris Dendrinos was quoted by the Financial Times. “That’s put a huge tailwind behind these companies.”
This spending spree includes a wide range of energy companies, including unproven and next-gen energy technologies that are enjoying a windfall of funding that they may not otherwise have achieved. The tech sector is investing heavily in pie-in-the-sky energy research like nuclear fusion, enhanced geothermal energy, and space-based solar power. Earlier this year Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, signed a deal with startup Overview Energy to develop as much as 1 gigawatt of space-based solar power.
The market is particularly bullish about nuclear fusion, which has finally broken through on Wall Street after years of struggling to go private. Historically, nuclear fusion research is so expensive and seen as so experimental that it’s been funded by governments and huge public projects. But now fusion startups are popping up in astonishing numbers and seeing successful IPOs.
While it may seem risky to put too much attention into unproven technologies, an all-of-the-above approach will be absolutely essential to keep up with the energy monster that AI is creating. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of ChatGPT firm OpenAI, said at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It motivates us to go invest more in fusion,” he went on to specify.
