Elon Musk declared that “solar electricity will become by far the biggest source of power for civilization” in a recent post on X, a bold prediction that lands as the tech industry confronts a severe power crisis fueled by the energy demands of artificial intelligence.
Solar Power’s Dominance Increases Worldwide
Musk’s statement, a response to a chart showing solar’s dominance in new electricity growth, highlights a critical bottleneck for the AI boom: a lack of power.
Tech giants are scrambling to build massive data centers, with global power demand projected to surge 30% by 2035, largely driven by AI. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has issued a stark warning that this strain could cause electricity rates to double within five years.
Futuristic Solutions For Growing Power Demand
This energy crunch has become so acute that industry leaders are proposing radical, futuristic solutions. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai have both detailed plans for data centers in orbit.
Google’s “Project Suncatcher” aims to build scalable AI systems in space to harness “near-continuous solar power,” a resource unavailable on Earth. Meanwhile, Samsung and OpenAI are collaborating on floating data centers to use cold seawater for cooling.
Ark Invest Says Starship Is ‘Critical’ To Solving AI’s Power Bottleneck
These ambitious orbital, solar-powered solutions are directly linked to Musk’s other ventures.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest identified the AI industry’s “major bottleneck” as power and pointed to Musk’s SpaceX Starship as the “critical” technology required to make orbital data centers economically viable.
Musk himself has engaged with the concept, replying “Great idea lol” to Sundar Pichai’s post about Project Suncatcher. Pichai, in turn, acknowledged the plan was “Only possible because of SpaceX’s massive advances in launch technology!”
Here are some solar, general utilities, and energy infrastructure-linked stocks for investors to consider.
| Stocks | YTD Performance | One-Year Performance |
| NextEra Energy Inc. (NYSE:NEE) | 17.29% | 17.29% |
| First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLR) | 37.60% | 37.60% |
| Sunrun Inc. (NASDAQ:RUN) | 84.82% | 72.96% |
| CMS Energy Corp. (NYSE:CMS) | 11.12% | 11.12% |
| Primoris Services Corp. (NYSE:PRIM) | 51.42% | 47.55% |
| WEC Energy Group Inc. (NYSE:WEC) | 18.88% | 16.24% |
| Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK) | 14.63% | 11.66% |
The futures of the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq 100 indices were mixed on Friday after a sharp fall on Thursday.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Image via Shutterstock
