NextEra Energy agreed Monday to buy Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $67 billion, combining the largest U.S. renewable developer with the utility that powers Northern Virginia, the world's biggest data center market, in a bet that artificial intelligence will keep electricity demand climbing for years.
The transaction would create the largest regulated electric utility in the world, the companies said, with a combined market capitalization of $249 billion and an enterprise value of $420 billion. That would rank the new company third in the energy sector behind Exxon Mobil and Chevron and reshape who supplies power to the tech firms racing to build out AI infrastructure.
Terms of the deal
NextEra shareholders will own 74.5 percent of the combined company and Dominion investors 25.5 percent. The company will keep the NextEra name and trade under its New York Stock Exchange ticker. Florida-based NextEra carried a market cap of more than $190 billion heading into Monday; Richmond, Va.-based Dominion was valued at more than $50 billion.
NextEra Chief Executive John Ketchum will lead the combined company. Dominion CEO Robert Blue will run the regulated utilities business and join the board. The companies said they expect the deal to close in mid-to-late 2027 and have offered Dominion customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina $2.25 billion in credits over two years.
Why now
"Electricity demand is rising faster than it has in decades," Ketchum said in a statement. "We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever."
Ketchum told investors Monday the combined company can become the "go-to partner for large load customers," the industry term for hyperscale data center operators. NextEra plans to build more than 30 data center hubs across the United States. Together, the companies said, they would lead the world in renewables and battery storage, lead the U.S. in natural gas generation and rank second in nuclear power. NextEra last year struck a deal with Alphabet's Google to reopen the mothballed Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa.
The two utilities would serve about 10 million customers across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Electricity prices rose 6.1 percent in April from a year earlier, according to the latest U.S. inflation data, a backdrop that is already squeezing households before the data center buildout fully lands on the grid.
On the tape
Investors split the deal Monday in the usual pattern for a stock takeover. Dominion shares surged about 11 percent on the offer premium. NextEra shares fell more than 4 percent as its holders absorbed the dilution and the integration risk that comes with swallowing a utility one-quarter their size.
The risks
The combination would concentrate generation, transmission and a key piece of the AI power supply chain inside a single regulated holding company, an outcome that will draw scrutiny at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Justice Department's antitrust division and at state public utility commissions in every state the companies serve. Approvals in Virginia, where Dominion's rate base sits at the center of the data center boom, are likely to be the most contested. The all-stock structure also leaves NextEra shareholders carrying the cost of the premium without a cash exit, a trade Monday's 4 percent drop in the stock suggests not all of them welcomed.
The companies said they expect to close in mid-to-late 2027, giving regulators more than a year to work through the filings and giving rival utilities, customers and state attorneys general time to weigh in.