Google commits $4.3 billion to nuclear reactor upgrades in landmark Constellation power deal

Google and Constellation Energy announced on Monday a 20-year agreement that will route 3,590 megawatts of electricity to the search giant's data centers and fund the addition of 890 megawatts of new nuclear capacity to the mid-Atlantic power grid, one of the largest corporate clean-energy deals struck so far in the artificial-intelligence buildout. The companies said the arrangement, detailed in a joint announcement from Google, pairs a long-term power purchase with a technology alliance built around Google Cloud and the company's Gemini Enterprise software.

Under the agreement, Constellation will spend more than $4.3 billion upgrading 11 of its nuclear units across Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, raising their thermal and electrical output through a process known as a power uprate, in what one wire-service account of the agreement described as a roughly 3.6-gigawatt commitment overall. The first increment of new capacity is expected by 2028. A separate 15-year supply contract covers roughly 2,700 megawatts from Constellation's existing reactor fleet, with the full package serving Google's expanding fleet of AI and cloud computing facilities inside the PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that distributes power to 67 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia.

The Numbers Behind the Deal

Constellation said the investment would sustain roughly 4,400 existing nuclear-plant jobs and generate about 7,200 construction positions while the uprates are built out. Shares of Constellation Energy jumped as much as 15 percent on the news, touching $309.30 and erasing most of the stock's losses for the year, while a broader basket of nuclear-adjacent stocks, including Oklo, NuScale Power, Vistra and Talen Energy, also rallied, according to a market summary published by Yahoo Finance. The technology side of the arrangement layers a five-year alliance on top of the power contract, with Google software applied to tasks Constellation described as "speed to power," generation optimization and protection of critical infrastructure.

How Data-Center Demand Rewired the Grid

The agreement is the latest in a string of power deals that Big Tech has struck with nuclear operators since 2024, as the computing requirements of large AI models collide with a power grid that had, for decades, assumed flat electricity demand. Constellation has already signed long-term nuclear contracts with Microsoft, tied to the restart of a reactor at its Pennsylvania plant, and with Meta, covering the output of its Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois, alongside smaller agreements with Amazon and Walmart. Google itself has pursued a mixed strategy, separately committing early-stage development capital to small modular reactor projects with Kairos Power and Elementl Power and signing a $3 billion hydroelectric supply contract with Brookfield.

The strain those commitments are responding to shows up most starkly in PJM's capacity auctions, the mechanism by which the grid operator secures power supply years in advance. PJM's most recent auction cleared at $329.17 per megawatt-day, the maximum allowed under a price cap negotiated with federal regulators, more than 20 percent above the prior year's record and more than double the price from two years earlier, a result PJM attributed largely to data-center-driven load growth. The grid operator's forecast for peak demand rose by more than 5,400 megawatts in a single year, with all but a sliver of that increase attributed to data centers. Any new generation added to the grid, including the uprates Google is financing, must still pass through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has approved power uprates at American reactors since the 1970s under a formal safety review process that has so far added the output equivalent of roughly eight new reactors nationwide.

Who Pays, and Who Benefits

Constellation's existing nuclear workforce in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey stands to benefit most directly from the jobs the deal sustains, while construction trades in those states gain a multiyear pipeline of upgrade work. Google, for its part, locks in a known power price for two decades at a moment when AI companies face intensifying competition for electricity supply, insulating its data-center expansion from some of the volatility that has rattled the capacity market. The deal's costs and benefits for ordinary electricity customers are less clear-cut. PJM's price spikes have already drawn political pressure; Pennsylvania's governor filed a complaint with federal regulators over rising capacity costs that contributed to the agreement capping auction prices for the next two years. Consumer advocates in the region have argued that new generation financed by a single large corporate customer does not necessarily translate into lower bills for residential ratepayers, even when it adds supply to the shared grid, since the added megawatts are contracted directly to Google rather than sold into the open market that sets prices for everyone else.

"This long-term clean energy collaboration with Google can serve as a model for how technology companies and the energy industry can work together responsibly," said Joe Dominguez, Constellation's chairman, president and chief executive.

Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's global head of energy and power, framed the deal in similar terms, saying the company was "committed to meeting our growth responsibly by actively investing in clean, reliable power that brings new capacity to our nation's grids."

What Happens Next

The uprate projects now move into the NRC's multiyear licensing and safety-review process at each of the 11 affected units, a sequence that determines whether the 2028 delivery target for the first new capacity holds. Investors will be watching Constellation's next quarterly results for details on how the $4.3 billion will be phased across the Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey sites, and whether additional reactor owners in PJM territory move to strike comparable deals as AI companies continue to compete for scarce firm power. Regulators and state officials, meanwhile, are likely to keep pressing PJM and FERC over how capacity costs flow through to residential bills, a debate this deal is almost certain to intensify rather than settle, given its scale and the attention already paid to tech companies' growing footprint on the grid.