Micron Technology's latest earnings show that its power-efficient HBM3E memory has become central to AI infrastructure, allowing data centers to cut electricity costs or pack more computing power into existing power budgets.
As power availability becomes the defining constraint for scaling AI, utilities that supply electricity to these data centers—including NextEra Energy, Constellation Energy, and others—stand to benefit from a surge in demand, with Deloitte projecting U.S. AI data center power consumption could grow more than 30 fold by 2035.
What happened
Micron Technology reported $41.5 billion in total revenue for Q3 fiscal 2026, up 346% year over year, driven by AI demand for its HBM3E memory chips, which use about 30% less power than competing offerings. The company also raised its planned U.S. investment to more than $250 billion through 2035.
Why it matters
Micron's power-efficient memory allows hyperscalers to either reduce electricity costs or fit more GPUs into the same power envelope at a time when power availability has become the primary bottleneck for scaling AI. This efficiency is reshaping how data center economics work, making power consumption a central design concern rather than an afterthought.
What to watch
Deloitte estimates U.S. AI data center power demand could grow more than 30 fold from about 4 gigawatts in 2024 to 123 gigawatts by 2035. Utilities including NextEra Energy, Constellation Energy, and Entergy are already positioned as long-term beneficiaries, with NextEra planning to build roughly 15 gigawatts of new capacity by 2035.
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Micron's explosive growth—$41.5 billion in Q3 fiscal 2026 revenue, up 346% year over year—reflects the AI industry's hunger for memory, but the underlying story goes deeper. The real constraint facing hyperscalers is not chips themselves but the electricity to power them. By engineering HBM3E memory to use 30% less power than competitors while delivering more than 1.2 terabytes per second of bandwidth, Micron has solved a problem that directly affects the economics of every AI data center deployment. This has implications far beyond semiconductor manufacturing.
The power angle reshapes how downstream industries benefit from the AI boom. Deloitte's projection that U.S. AI data center power demand could grow more than 30 fold—from about 4 gigawatts in 2024 to 123 gigawatts by 2035—means utilities that can reliably supply that electricity will see a steady, decades-long revenue stream. NextEra Energy's stated plan to build roughly 15 gigawatts of new capacity by 2035 (on top of the 33 gigawatts it added over the past four years) and the company's framing of the period as "a golden age of power demand" suggests utilities recognize the scale of this opportunity. Where Micron's chips drive efficiency at the rack level, utilities provide the generation and transmission backbone that makes those racks economically viable.
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