Dear Reader,
They said shale changed everything. Then they said wind and solar changed everything.
Today, Meta signed a 20-year deal to buy 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear power from Constellation Energy. One company. One utility. One contract the size of a small country's power budget.
I read that number three times.
These tech firms are not buying electricity. They are buying something else. They are buying 20 years of steady power. No weather risk. No price spikes. Just electrons, every hour, for two decades.
The utilities selling that kind of deal are the new toll roads of the digital age.
You are here because you know where the real signal lives. Today I will show you what I am watching.
The Wire
What to watch before the market opens
• THE BARREL: WTI crude is near $93 a barrel. OPEC+ meets Sunday to set July output. Six straight weeks of rig gains. The supply picture is shifting.
• THE GRID: Meta just signed a 1.1-gigawatt nuclear deal with Constellation. Today. NERC says U.S. power demand will grow 224 gigawatts over the next decade. That is 70% more than they said one year ago.
• THE POLICY DESK: FERC has a hard deadline. By June 30, the agency rules on how AI data centers hook up to the power grid. That ruling shapes the power business for a decade.
• THE PLAY: One type of utility gets a guaranteed check no matter which AI firm wins the race. The data shows you exactly who they are.
The Barrel
Oil, gas, and the assets that move the world
WTI is near $93 a barrel today. Brent is near $95. Both are down from their March highs but still up more than 50% year over year.
The Iran war did this. The Strait of Hormuz has been shut since February. OPEC+ meets Sunday to set July output. They will likely add more barrels on paper. The word on paper is doing a lot of work. Gulf nations can't ship through a war zone.
The real story is the U.S. rig count. Baker Hughes reported 562 active rigs on May 29. Six straight weeks of gains. The highest count since May 2025. American drillers respond to $90-plus oil. They always do.
Natural gas tells a different story. Henry Hub is near $3.17. Storage sits 6% above the five-year average. Plenty of gas at home. But Europe pays $12 to $15 per unit for U.S. LNG. That gap is not closing.
America is now the world's top LNG shipper. The toll booth is open.
The Grid
Nuclear, SMRs, and the wires behind the electrons
Meta signed the deal this morning. Twenty years. 1.1 gigawatts. Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois. One of the largest single corporate nuclear deals in U.S. history.
This is not a trend. It is a declaration.
Amazon is buying nuclear from Talen Energy. Microsoft restarted Three Mile Island. Google signed for 500 megawatts of SMRs with Kairos Power. Big Tech is building a second power grid on top of the one we have.
The old grid is straining. NERC put out its summer report on May 19. Demand will grow 224 gigawatts by 2035. That is 70% more than NERC said one year ago. The fastest demand surge NERC has tracked since 1995.
The NRC is moving too. In March it gave TerraPower a build permit for the Kemmerer, Wyoming reactor. The first advanced nuclear permit in more than 40 years. In April, the NRC approved three new fast-track paths for small reactors. Micro-reactors can now win a license in 6 to 12 months.
The problem is no longer rules. It is steel and wire.
The Policy Desk
Washington, rules, and the game behind the game
FERC has a hard deadline.
By June 30, the agency must rule on how AI data centers hook up to the power grid. Who pays for the work. How fast new loads get online. Whether you can put a reactor and a data center on the same site.
Lawyers sent FERC 3,500 pages of comments. Utilities, tech firms, and grid owners are all watching. This ruling will shape how power gets built and sold in America for the next decade.
The Trump team is moving. DOE gave $94 million to eight firms in May to build the SMR supply chain. NRC is running 18-month reviews on new reactor designs. Three reactors are on track for first power by July 4th. DOE put $2.7 billion into U.S. uranium in January.
The nuclear supply chain is getting federal backing. From mine to reactor to wire.
Here is the question almost no one is asking.
FERC's ruling creates two very different winners. One group of utilities does well when grid hookups are slow. Another does well when they are fast. Most investors have not thought through which is which.
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The Play
Where the B-quadrant investor positions
The answer is the regulated utility.
Here is how the toll works. A tech firm wants nuclear power. It signs a 20-year deal with a utility like Constellation. The utility owns the reactor. The utility gets the check. Every month. For 20 years. The tech firm takes the risk on delivery.
The utility is already on the grid. It does not need FERC to approve a new hookup. The tech firm does. That is the edge.
FERC's June 30 ruling will tell you whether data centers get fast hookups or slow ones. Fast hookups help firms that are building new supply. Slow hookups help utilities that already own plants and hold long-term deals.
Either way, the utilities that already have signed nuclear deals with Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft are getting paid on electrons for the next 20 years.
The cars change. The road stays the same. You want to own the road.
Stay empowered.
P.S. The FERC ruling lands before June 30. Less than 30 days. Robert's team at The Kiyosaki Letter has identified the specific utilities in the direct path of the AI data center build-out, including the names that already hold signed power deals and the ones most exposed to the June ruling. See the full list here.