Constellation Energy Jumped 12% on a $4.3 Billion Google Deal. Five Days Earlier, Amazon Signed Almost the Same Thing.

Eleven nuclear reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey are getting new turbines, steam generators, and digital control systems, and Google is paying $4.3 billion toward the bill. The agreement, announced October 6, gives Alphabet's cloud division a 20-year claim on 890 megawatts of new capacity that doesn't exist yet, plus a 15-year supply deal for 2,700 megawatts the plants already produce. Combined, roughly 3,590 megawatts is now spoken for on the PJM grid, the 13-state system that runs from Chicago to the Mid-Atlantic.

Constellation shares did what they've done after every one of these announcements this year: they jumped, closing up 12% at $300.00. Google's piece of the deal, the 890 megawatts of new capacity backed by $4.3 billion, is larger than the agreement Amazon signed with Constellation only five days earlier for its Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, which covered 690 megawatts total and $3 billion in upgrades.

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Why It Matters

Uprates are the workaround to nuclear power's biggest constraint. Building a new reactor can take a decade and tens of billions of dollars, while upgrading turbines and control systems at a plant that's already licensed and connected to the grid can add capacity in a few years for a fraction of the cost. Constellation's 11 units in this deal already exist. They're simply being pushed to produce more from the same fuel and the same footprint. The first upgrade is due online in 2028, modest by the AI industry's usual timeline but fast by nuclear's.

For Constellation, the math is simpler than the engineering. Wall Street projects normalized earnings per share will climb from $9.39 in 2025 to $16.52 by 2028, a 76% increase, built almost entirely on contracted megawatts like these. CEO Joe Dominguez called the Google arrangement a model other utilities and tech companies could copy, language that echoes what he said five days earlier about Amazon's own nuclear agreement for the Calvert Cliffs plant. A CEO who repeats the same pitch twice in a week is usually describing a strategy, not just marketing a press release.

The flip side of this contracted certainty shows up on household electric bills. PJM's capacity auction for the 2026-2027 delivery year cleared at $329.17 per megawatt-day, the maximum allowed under federal price caps and a 22% increase over the prior year's $269.92. PJM attributes part of that jump to its own demand forecast, which has 2026-2027 peak load running about 5,446 megawatts, or 3.5%, higher than the year before, with data center growth named as a driver. PJM itself estimates the higher clearing price will add roughly 1.5% to 5% to customer bills, depending on the state and utility. Google and Amazon are paying Constellation directly for new capacity, which is exactly the kind of investment regulators say the grid needs. Whether it arrives fast enough to ease the pricing pressure now built into 2026 and 2027 bills, rather than just keeping pace with the demand causing it, is still an open question.

What to Watch Next

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission still has to approve uprate license amendments for all 11 units, a process that has historically run one to three years per plant depending on scope. Watch whether other hyperscalers follow Google's uprate approach rather than the new-build and restart deals Microsoft and Meta have favored, including Microsoft's agreement to restart Three Mile Island's Unit 1. PJM's next capacity auction results will be the clearest signal yet of whether this wave of utility investment is starting to ease the price pressure that's been building since 2023, or simply keeping pace with demand that keeps outrunning it.

The Pulse24 Take

Two nuclear deals in five days, from the same utility, say more about Constellation's negotiating position than about Google or Amazon individually. The company sits on a fleet of paid-off reactors right when hyperscalers need decades of guaranteed, low-carbon electricity and are willing to pay above-market rates to lock it in.

That leverage is already in the stock price, which raises a fair question about what happens if AI capital spending cools before 2028, when these new megawatts are due. Earnings built on 20-year contracted revenue are a safer bet than earnings built on spot power prices, but they still depend on data center demand holding up for most of a decade. The bigger risk here may not be nuclear supply at all. It may be whether the AI buildout keeps growing at the pace these contracts assume it will.