Joulent, a three-year-old Houston energy startup, just became one of the most consequential names in the AI infrastructure race — not because it builds chips or models, but because it can get a gigawatt of electricity to a data center faster than the grid can.
National Grid Ventures (NGV), the commercial investment arm of British utility giant National Grid plc, announced on July 1 that it has agreed to a $1.75 billion strategic minority investment in Joulent, LLC, acquiring a 35% stake in the company. The figure implies a valuation of roughly $5 billion for a firm that only came out of stealth in June, after being incubated for three years by investment firm Engine No. 1 in collaboration with GE Vernova.
The capital will fund Joulent's "Across-the-Meter™" model, which co-locates gas generation, battery storage and eventually renewables directly next to power-hungry customers rather than routing electricity through the traditional grid and its years-long interconnection queues. The company's flagship effort, Project Kilby, is a 2.67-gigawatt power facility in West Texas being built in a 50/50 partnership with Chevron's Energy Forge subsidiary and supported by GE Vernova's engineering. Kilby will deliver electricity to a Microsoft-operated data center campus under a 20-year power purchase agreement, with first power targeted for 2028.
"American innovation is moving faster than the power infrastructure built to support it," said Chris James, Joulent's Founder and CEO, in the companies' joint announcement. "Joulent was created to close that gap. This investment from National Grid Ventures strengthens our ability to deliver reliable, large-scale power on the timelines AI infrastructure and advanced industry now requires. We are building an independent company designed for speed, scale, and execution, without shifting the cost of that growth onto local communities."
National Grid's chief executive framed the deal not as charity toward a fast-growing AI economy but as a calculated bet on where electricity demand growth is actually happening. "Our investment in Joulent is a disciplined, partner-led investment in contracted critical infrastructure for the AI-driven large load economy," said Zoë Yujnovich, National Grid Chief Executive. "Through National Grid Ventures, we are gaining exposure to a major source of electricity demand growth that diversifies our regional U.S. exposure and is supported by strong partners. It extends National Grid's core strengths of investing in long-duration infrastructure with contractual cash flows and attractive risk-adjusted returns."
The Joulent deal did not happen in isolation. It landed in the middle of what The CODEW's July 31 "Startup Funding Watch" roundup described as a $4.2 billion week for AI infrastructure and energy mega-rounds, and Crunchbase News has separately tracked it among the largest funding events of 2026 spanning AI, energy and biotech. National Grid itself said the Joulent stake is incremental to its existing five-year, roughly £70 billion (about $90 billion) capital investment program through 2031, and that it expects to connect more than 10 gigawatts of new demand across the U.K. and U.S. over the next five years — a figure that would have sounded implausible before the AI buildout began driving data-center electricity requests into the multi-gigawatt range.
Why It Matters
The Joulent round is a concrete data point in a trend that has been building all year: AI's power appetite has outgrown the ability of regulated utilities to expand transmission and generation on any timeline compatible with hyperscaler roadmaps. Data centers that once needed tens of megawatts now request multi-gigawatt campuses, and interconnection queues in most U.S. regions run three to five years or longer. Data Center Knowledge's coverage of the deal explicitly framed it as a response to those delays, describing the arrangement as a way to bypass grid bottlenecks by locating generation directly at the load.
What makes this deal notable is not just the dollar figure but who is writing the check. National Grid is not a venture investor or a hyperscaler — it is one of the largest transmission and distribution utilities in the world, and it is choosing to become a direct financial participant in off-grid, gas-fired power generation built explicitly for AI customers. That is a meaningful shift in posture: utilities are moving from being passive infrastructure providers that AI companies wait on, to active investors underwriting the speed-to-power solutions that let AI companies skip the wait altogether. Expect more incumbents — regulated utilities, oil majors like Chevron already embedded in Kilby, and turbine makers like GE Vernova — to formalize similar equity stakes rather than simple supply contracts.
What to Watch
The near-term test is execution: whether Project Kilby's 2.67 gigawatts actually reach first power on the 2028 target, and whether the gas-fired, co-located model can scale to Joulent's broader multi-gigawatt pipeline without the regulatory, permitting or emissions pushback that has slowed similar projects elsewhere. Watch also for how state regulators and ratepayer advocates respond to a model explicitly marketed as avoiding cost-shifting onto local grids — a claim that will be tested as more Across-the-Meter projects move from announcement to construction. Finally, watch whether other major utilities follow National Grid's lead with direct equity stakes in AI-focused power developers, which would mark a broader realignment of the traditional utility business model around the AI buildout rather than around residential and commercial ratepayers.
"Our investment in Joulent is a disciplined, partner-led investment in contracted critical infrastructure for the AI-driven large load economy."- Zoe Yujnovich, Chief Executive, National Grid