This Is How Wall Street Could Buy Your Power Company

August 15, 2025

Private equity giant BlackRock is waging a scorched-earth campaign to acquire a regional power company as Wall Street seeks to profit from the AI energy boom.

Katya Schwenk

As the AI boom promises soaring electricity demand, private equity giant BlackRock is waging a scorched-earth campaign — with the help of suspiciously timed advocacy from labor allies and ostensible clean-energy groups — to acquire an electric supplier and get a slice of newfound energy profits.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has its tentacles in all facets of American life. The behemoth is buying up grocery brands, dental practices, apartment buildings, and nursing homes. But the opaque industry of private equity has mostly stayed away from electric utilities, the regulated companies that supply power to homes and businesses, because they often don’t yield quick returns.

That’s changing. Last year, the BlackRock subsidiary Global Infrastructure Partners and a Canadian pension fund announced a $6.2 billion deal to buy Minnesota Power, an electric utility that serves more than 100,000 customers in northern Minnesota, including the city of Duluth. The proposal faced fierce opposition from consumer protection groups and environmental watchdogs, who worried the deal would lead to massive rate hikes and hamper efforts to shift the utility’s portfolio to renewables, given private equity’s extractive, short-term business model.

This spring, Blackstone, another private equity firm, announced plans to buy a major electric utility in Texas and New Mexico, if regulators give the green light. The spike in interest is emblematic of how the AI’s massive energy demands, which have boomed alongside data center construction across the country, are drawing Wall Street’s attention to electric utilities it once ignored.
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