First, it was a power bottleneck. Then a compute bottleneck. Now, as AI agents burn through tokens faster than anyone predicted, we're back in a compute shortage. Meanwhile, it's getting harder than ever to site and build the data centers to alleviate it.

This is shaking up who builds the energy infrastructure to serve it, and how it gets built.

This week, we’re diving into the biggest utility deal in American history: NextEra’s attempt to buy Dominion. If it happens, it would combine the biggest renewable energy developer in the US with the utility serving the world's largest concentration of data centers. 

What does it mean for their power development strategy? We debate the regulatory path, the power mix question, and who actually benefits.

Then we turn to an infrastructure debate. Are we entering a new era of distributed, grid-connected data centers that will overshadow the gigawatt-scale campus model? 

And we close with a rapid-fire look at some ideas for solving the compute crunch: Home inference hubs, water heaters that serve AI, and wave-powered data centers.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Caroline Golin. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey, Sean Marquand, and Anne Bailey.

Open Circuit is brought to you by FlexGen, a leader in integrated battery energy storage solutions and energy management software. FlexGen helps owners and operators gain greater visibility and control across complex energy systems to maximize performance. Learn more at www.flexgen.com.