Cost per kWh

Cost per kWh is the price paid for each unit of electricity a data center consumes. It sounds like a utility-bill line item, but it is a strategic variable because energy is a growing share of the total cost of running AI, and that cost does not stay at the bottom of the stack — it flows upward into cost per token and, eventually, into the margins of every application built on top. That is why power price increasingly decides where clusters get sited at all.

If power prices rise or turn volatile, model-serving economics erode at the base, squeezing everyone above. The exposure sits with the power producers and independent generators positioned to sell into this demand — Constellation, Vistra, NRG and Talen among the incumbents, next-generation nuclear like Oklo, and infrastructure players such as Crusoe that build around cheap or stranded power. Whoever controls low, stable electricity controls a cost input the whole chain must absorb.