BlackRock, Big Tech and the Corporate Capture of the GridWall Street Is Buying the Grid While AI Devours the PowerElectricity powers our homes, hospitals, schools, water systems and communications. Yet this essential public service is increasingly being reshaped around the demands of Wall Street investors and some of the world’s most powerful technology corporations—at the very moment the climate crisis requires a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. This is not merely a story about artificial intelligence consuming enormous quantities of electricity. It is a story about corporate rule: who owns essential infrastructure, who influences the rules governing it, who receives the benefits and who is forced to absorb the costs. |
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That power is reinforced by a constitutional system that treats corporations—artificial entities created through law—as holders of constitutional rights and treats spending money to influence elections as protected speech. Corporations can accumulate vast economic power, use that wealth to shape elections and public policy, and invoke constitutional protections when governments attempt to regulate them. BlackRock, already the world’s largest asset manager, is expanding into electric utilities, power plants and data centers. At the same time, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and other technology giants are racing to build energy-hungry artificial-intelligence infrastructure. These developments are connected. BlackRock and Big Tech are increasingly investing together—acquiring both the data centers consuming enormous amounts of electricity and portions of the infrastructure needed to supply them. The danger is not simply that AI requires vast quantities of power. It is that the corporations profiting from the AI boom are gaining greater influence over who owns the energy system, what gets built, who pays for it, which communities absorb the pollution—and whether decisions affecting our energy and climate future are made democratically at all. BlackRock moves into the power systemBlackRock completed its acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners, or GIP, in 2024. GIP specializes in acquiring energy, transportation, water and digital infrastructure. In October 2025, Minnesota regulators approved a $6.2 billion takeover of ALLETE, the parent company of Minnesota Power, by BlackRock’s GIP and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The acquisition faced opposition from Minnesota’s attorney general, consumer advocates and environmental organizations. An administrative law judge recommended rejecting it, concluding that the risks to ratepayers, the utility’s financial health and Minnesota’s energy transition outweighed its potential benefits. Regulators approved the transaction after obtaining additional ratepayer and clean-energy commitments. (Associated Press) In March 2026, a consortium led by GIP and private-equity firm EQT agreed to acquire the AES Corporation in a transaction valued at approximately $33.4 billion, including debt. AES owns power-generation and utility assets across the United States and internationally. (Global Infrastructure Partners) BlackRock is accumulating influential positions across the power system precisely when AI is making electricity infrastructure increasingly valuable. BlackRock is investing on both sides of the meterBlackRock, GIP, Microsoft, MGX and Nvidia created the AI Infrastructure Partnership to invest in data centers and the energy systems supporting them. The partnership has described plans to mobilize as much as $100 billion, including debt, for AI infrastructure. In October 2025, the partnership announced an agreement to acquire Aligned Data Centers at an enterprise value of approximately $40 billion. Aligned owns or is developing data-center capacity across more than 50 campuses. (Global Infrastructure Partners) BlackRock and its partners are investing in the facilities consuming electricity while BlackRock’s infrastructure division acquires companies that generate and distribute it. Microsoft and Nvidia—whose businesses benefit directly from expanding AI capacity—are participating in the same infrastructure partnership. This concentration of ownership and investment raises a fundamental question: Will the energy system serve the public, or will it be reorganized around the growth of AI and the profits it promises? AI’s appetite for electricityU.S. data centers consumed approximately 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, representing 4.4 percent of the country’s electricity use. The Department of Energy projects that consumption could reach between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours by 2028—between 6.7 and 12 percent of all U.S. electricity use. (Department of Energy) Meeting that demand will require new power plants, transmission lines and substations. If corporate growth projections prove accurate, communities could face tighter supplies, higher prices and more pollution. If speculative projects are canceled, ratepayers could still be left paying for infrastructure constructed to serve facilities that never materialized. The risk is public. The potential profits remain private. The stakes are already visible within PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest regional power market. In the first half of 2026, transmission-congestion costs increased 43 percent to approximately $6 billion, while real-time wholesale electricity costs rose from $20.4 billion to $29.4 billion. Growing data-center demand is one factor straining the region. (Reuters) No family should pay a higher electric bill because a multinational technology corporation wants another hyperscale data center. AI could accelerate global warmingThe climate consequences extend beyond the electricity used inside data centers. Meeting rapidly growing demand will determine which power plants are built and which aging fossil-fuel facilities remain open. By mid-2026, proposed U.S. gas-fired generating capacity associated with data centers reportedly approached 189 gigawatts—up from only four gigawatts identified in early 2024. If constructed, those plants could operate for decades and undermine efforts to reduce the pollution driving global warming. (Global Energy Monitor analysis reported by The Guardian) Corporate promises of “100 percent renewable energy” do not necessarily mean a data center receives carbon-free electricity every hour. Facilities operate around the clock and may still depend on gas- or coal-fired power when renewable energy is unavailable. This creates a dangerous cycle. Climate-driven heat waves strain the grid and increase demand for air conditioning. AI data centers add enormous new loads. Utilities build more fossil-fuel infrastructure to meet that demand, producing additional emissions that intensify global warming. Communities should not be forced to choose between reliable electricity and a livable climate. Corporate power shapes the rulesThe constitutional imbalance described at the beginning of this article becomes even more dangerous when concentrated corporate wealth enters the political process. According to an updated Public Citizen analysis reported by Reuters, corporations contributed a record $646 million to federal political committees during the 18 months ending in June 2026. Cryptocurrency, AI and online-gambling corporations accounted for approximately $344 million. These totals exclude undisclosed dark-money contributions. (Reuters) These interests also employ lobbyists, fund trade associations and negotiate directly with governments seeking their investments. Families enter this system as individual ratepayers. Corporations enter it with attorneys, political contributions and billions of dollars. A regulatory hearing cannot deliver meaningful democratic accountability when one side holds vastly greater power to shape the laws and political environment surrounding it. This imbalance was constructed through law. Supreme Court rulings extended constitutional protections to corporations and treated political spending as protected speech, enabling corporations to convert their economic power into political power. The question is therefore bigger than one BlackRock acquisition or one data-center permit. It is whether essential infrastructure will be governed democratically or reorganized around corporate profit. The constitutional roots of corporate ruleThis imbalance was constructed and protected through law. Over generations, Supreme Court rulings extended constitutional protections intended for human beings to corporations and other artificial entities. The Court also treated spending money to influence elections as constitutionally protected speech. Those doctrines allow corporations to convert economic power into political power. They can spend vast sums influencing elections and public policy while retaining the ability to invoke constitutional protections against government regulation. Citizens United did not create corporate rule. It dramatically expanded the power of corporations and wealthy interests to shape the government responsible for regulating them. The question is therefore bigger than one BlackRock acquisition or one data-center permit. It is whether essential infrastructure will be governed democratically or reorganized around corporate profit. This is what corporate rule looks like.Your support helps Move to Amend expose the constitutional foundations of corporate power and organize for the We the People Amendment. Donate today to help put people—not corporations—in charge of our future. Electricity must serve peopleData-center developers—not households—should pay for the power plants and grid expansions their facilities require. Communities also deserve enforceable protections covering electricity rates, water consumption, emissions, labor standards and abandoned projects. But regulation alone cannot correct a political system in which corporate wealth helps determine the rules. The We the People Amendment, H.J.Res. 54, would establish that constitutional rights belong to human beings, not corporations, and require government to regulate political spending rather than treating money as speech. The future of our electricity system—and our climate—must be decided democratically. Our power should serve the people, not Wall Street and Big Tech.
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