Morgan Stanley hosted its second "AI Energy Summit" in New York on December 4, 2025, addressing critical challenges and opportunities in power supply for AI development in North America. The event, attended by 400 participants—a fourfold increase from last year—highlighted surging interest in AI infrastructure. Key takeaways included severe power shortages for U.S. data center developers, the rise of off-grid solutions, favorable power-and-data-center deal terms, political risks, and labor/equipment shortages.

The summit’s primary finding was an impending power deficit for U.S. data center developers, projected at 10–20% in coming years, with risks escalating from 2026 and peaking in 2027–2028. This stems from AI’s nonlinear compute demand growth: data centers now scale to 1GW (vs. 100–500MW 1.5 years ago), while grid capacity lags. High power/water consumption has also sparked political pushback, compounding supply pressures.

Off-grid solutions emerged as a consensus fix, avoiding grid-connection disputes, rising tariffs, and complex approvals. Leading setups combine gas turbines, reciprocating engines, fuel cells, and battery storage, transitioning from stopgap to permanent solutions. Improved deal terms benefit power/data center developers, though execution risks persist amid supply-demand imbalances.

Morgan Stanley dubbed 2026 the "Year of Execution," where "Time-to-Power" solution stocks (e.g., utilities enabling rapid grid access, Bitcoin miners pivoting to HPC data centers) will hinge on project delivery. Turbine makers like GE Vernova (GEV.US) and Siemens Energy, fuel cell firm Bloom Energy (BE.US), and gas infrastructure players like EQT Energy (EQT.US) and Williams Companies (WMB.US) are well-positioned.

Compute service providers—NVIDIA (NVDA.US), data center REITs, and cloud upstarts like CoreWeave (CRWV.US)—and "bottleneck alleviators" (construction, transformers, transmission gear) round out the investment thesis.

Brookfield emphasized integrated data center solutions (land, power, chips), leveraging global real estate assets. Power remains the core constraint, with GPU-driven costs just 5% of total data center expenses. Turbine OEMs face integration hurdles, relying on intermediaries to deliver turnkey power packages.

Williams (WMB.US) highlighted 10–15-year contracts for on-site power, with Ohio’s supportive legislation ("Project Socrates") enabling rapid deployment. Galaxy Digital (GLXY.US) downplayed concerns over CoreWeave’s credit risk, citing diversified revenue and its Helios project’s power approvals.