NextEra to Buy Dominion for $67 Billion to Form Power Giant

by Josh Saul, Mark Chediak, David Carnevali of Bloomberg News, 5/18/26

NextEra Energy Inc. agreed to pay about $67 billion in stock for Dominion Energy Inc. in the biggest power acquisition ever, creating a giant utility extending from Florida to the data centers clustered in Virginia.

The deal would give NextEra a swathe of electricity assets stretching across Virginia and the Carolinas and position it as a dominant utility in a region that’s struggling to meet the surge in demand from newly built artificial intelligence facilities.

NextEra would pay the equivalent of about $76 per share for Dominion, the companies said in a statement Monday. The terms of the deal were reported earlier by Bloomberg.

The scope of the deal underscores how the spike in AI-driven power demand is pushing the industry to seek ever-greater size and clout. NextEra is already the largest US utility by market value and the country’s biggest renewables developer.

The tech industy continues to chase ambitious plans to add computing capacity across the country, with the biggest Silicon Valley companies forecasting more than $700 billion of capital spending this year alone. The US grid security regulator has projected that US power demand in during the peak period will rise by 224 gigawatts over the next decade, a staggering jump equivalent to adding about 180 million homes.

“Electricity demand is rising faster than it has in decades,” NextEra Chief Executive Officer John Ketchum said in the statement. “Scale matters more than ever — not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies.”

In addition to adding scale, the deal would also rebalance NextEra’s business mix, after years of fast growth in its unregulated energy development arm. Under the proposed merger, 80% of the the combined company’s operations would comprise its regulated utility arm. That would add create a “higher quality, higher multiple business for NextEra,” according to Barclays Plc analyst Nicholas Campanella.

The deal is expected to close in 12 to 18 months. The deal will likely be scrutinized closely by state regulators as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Justice Department, said Nicholas Amicucci, an analyst at Evercore ISI.

Top of mind for regulators will be the surge in household bills caused by power-thirsty AI facilities. The two companies said Monday they’re proposing $2.25 billion in bill credits spread over two years for Dominion customers.