{"text":[[{"start":13.3,"text":"In the northern Virginia town of Ashburn, the suburban quiet for its 40,000 residents is punctured by the constant hum of more than 150 data centres that power the AI revolution rewiring the US economy."}],[{"start":28.15,"text":"Dozens more are planned for this 40 sq km patch of land, known as “data centre alley”, which has become one of the most strategic infrastructure locations in America and the logic behind NextEra Energy’s $420bn tie-up with Dominion Energy unveiled on Monday. One of the largest mergers in US history would hand a single company enormous influence over the electricity network across the eastern seaboard underpinning the AI boom. "}],[{"start":55,"text":"The merger captures a defining feature of President Donald Trump’s second term: the return of politically explosive megadeals once deemed unthinkable because of their size and impact on Americans. As Washington races to secure US dominance in AI, power generation has become both a strategic priority and a source of mounting political anger over surging energy prices."}],[{"start":76.8,"text":"NextEra and Dominion will need to convince the Trump administration and multiple regulators that powering America’s AI ambitions will not come at the expense of consumers already squeezed by inflation and rising electricity bills. It promises to be a bruising fight, though Trump’s aggressively pro-dealmaking administration may offer the industry its best opening in years for a transaction of this scale."}],[{"start":101.35,"text":"NextEra agreed to pay an equivalent of $76 a share in stock for Dominion, giving the group an enterprise value of almost $124bn, including $56.7bn in debt. The completion of the deal, the largest this year, is in league with Paramount Skydance’s $111bn deal for Warner Bros Discovery in terms of size and political sensitivity. The FT reported on Friday that the companies were nearing a deal. "}],[{"start":129.2,"text":"For decades, utilities were seen as among the dullest corners of corporate America — stable, heavily regulated and less focused on big deals than simply keeping the lights on and paying shareholder dividends. The AI revolution has transformed them into something more consequential: gatekeepers to the infrastructure underpinning economic and geopolitical power. "}],[{"start":152.45,"text":"The battle for NextEra-Dominion will ultimately become a broader argument about who benefits from the AI boom and who pays for it. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":160.35,"text":"Talks first kicked off between NextEra’s chief executive John Ketchum and Dominion’s boss Robert Blue late last year under the code name project Astra, the Latin word for stars, according to people familiar with the matter. NextEra was nicknamed Neptune, fitting for a Florida utility serving 6mn customers in a coastal state, and Dominion was referred to as Eagle, they said. "}],[{"start":182.75,"text":"By early spring, talks were accelerating, the people said. The companies had practically agreed on price, the people added, confident there were few things that could derail an agreement. "}],[{"start":193.8,"text":"Even as negotiations were confined to a small circle of insiders, NextEra had already positioned itself with the Trump administration, emerging as one of the corporate donors backing Trump’s controversial $300mn White House ballroom project. Katharine MacGregor, deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, previously worked as an executive at NextEra."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":215.15,"text":"NextEra had been here before — and been burned. The company, then known as Florida Power & Light, agreed to merge with Entergy in 2000 only for the deal to collapse a year later. Maryland regulators derailed its 2005 takeover of Constellation Energy. Hawaiian regulators blocked its takeover of Hawaiian Electric Industries in 2014. In 2020, Duke Energy rebuffed another approach."}],[{"start":239.35,"text":"Now might be different given the favourable M&A environment. But while megadeals have become easier under Trump, they have also become far more politically charged."}],[{"start":249.15,"text":"NextEra must persuade utility commissions in Dominion’s homeland of South Carolina, North Carolina and most crucially Virginia that the merger will not further burden the 3.6mn customers across the three states already facing higher power costs. The company has said it expects approvals within 18 months, though some analysts believe the process could take longer."}],[{"start":270.5,"text":"“The regulatory critical path is longer, more uncertain and more structurally novel — particularly at the Virginia [State Corporation Commission] — than probably at first glance,” said David O’Hara, managing director at MKI Global Partners. "}],[{"start":285.6,"text":"If the deal is blocked by regulators, NextEra will owe Dominion a $4.8bn break fee, according to regulatory filings. "}],[{"start":294.05,"text":"Across Virginia, residents and politicians have increasingly rebelled against the spread of data centres, warning households could end up subsidising the enormous energy demands of tech companies. Protest movements have emerged in several counties over rising power costs, land use and the industrialisation of suburban communities."}],[{"start":315,"text":"The deal would “add fuel to the fire” of those tensions, said Cale Jaffe, head of environmental law and community engagement at the University of Virginia. “Three things are really crashing together, exploding data centre demand, state policy that calls for urgent reduction in greenhouse gas pollution and growing calls to address rising electricity rates.”"}],[{"start":336.95,"text":"A similar deal, BlackRock-owned Global Infrastructure Partners and EQT’s $33.3bn take-private deal for renewable power provider AES, has provoked political and regulatory backlash from politicians on both sides of the aisle."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":353.55,"text":"NextEra’s boss Ketchum is clearly aware of the battle ahead. Hours after the deal was announced he said it was all about delivering “more reliable and affordable electricity to our customers”."}],[{"start":365.25,"text":"Affordability — a crucial issue in the upcoming midterm elections for Trump — was mentioned 10 times by Ketchum during a call with analysts. Power costs are up 12 per cent in Virginia since February 2025 and 7 per cent nationally. He also stressed it would create good jobs, another buzz term for the administration. "}],[{"start":386.5,"text":"NextEra also pledged $2.2bn in bill credits for customers in Dominion’s home states of the Carolinas and Virginia, an effective ballast against rising prices aimed at reassuring state utilities commissions. "}],[{"start":401.45,"text":"The term data centre was not used in Monday’s deal announcement, instead referred to euphemistically as “large-load opportunities”."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":409.05,"text":"After Biden-era renewable tax credits were gutted in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful” tax bill, NextEra, which is the largest US renewable energy producer, pivoted towards the soaring power demands of tech giants and AI groups building vast data centre campuses. "}],[{"start":426.90000000000003,"text":"By combining with Dominion, the company would gain control over the grid system powering ground zero of America’s AI infrastructure build-out, which already handles roughly two-thirds of global internet traffic."}],[{"start":439.50000000000006,"text":"“NextEra was wildly successful in their renewables strategy over the past few decades,” said Julien Dumoulin-Smith, power, utilities and clean energy analyst at Jefferies. “But they were becoming overly dependent and knew they needed to diversify; this is what you could call a rebalancing of the business.”"}],[{"start":458.45000000000005,"text":"The combined group said it had a further 130 gigawatts of prospective data-centre-related demand in its pipeline, enough electricity to power as many as 130mn homes. That scale reflects the extraordinary appetite for power from companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta as they pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure."}],[{"start":480.00000000000006,"text":"Despite its stronghold in the heart of the US data centre build-out, Dominion is a “fixer-upper”, according to James West, head of energy and power at Melius Research. "}],[{"start":490.6000000000001,"text":"The merger gives Dominion the opportunity to shake the rust off the past decade, in which its stock badly trailed the wider utilities sector — forcing it to freeze its dividend in 2022 and shed a series of assets. For NextEra, Dominion gave it “access to their scale and to operate in the bigger data centre world”, West added."}],[{"start":519.3000000000001,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779180595_2689.mp3"}