The cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 30, 2024.
Power companies that are most exposed to the tech sector’s data center boom plunged early Monday, as the debut of China’s DeepSeek open-source AI laboratory led investors to question how much energy artificial intelligence applications will actually consume.
Constellation Energy and Vistra tumbled more than 16% in early trading. GE Vernova slid about 18% while Talen Energy lost more than 15%.
Constellation, Vistra and GE Vernova have led the S&P 500 this year as investors speculated that AI data centers will boost demand for enormous amounts of electricity. All three suffered as the market was pulled lower Monday by investor worries about AI competition from China.
DeepSeek released an AI model on Christmas Day that Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang described in an interview with CNBC last week as
Power stocks plunge as AI energy needs questioned due to new China AI lab
