NextEra, Brookfield to Build $100 Billion Data Center Campus

NextEra Energy (NEE) and Brookfield Corp. (BN) are partnering to transform a decommissioned Cold War-era uranium enrichment site in Kentucky into a data center campus requiring more than $100 billion in investment. The project repurposes the shuttered Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, one of the largest federal facilities of its kind during the nuclear era.

The deal pairs NextEra, the largest U.S. power utility by market capitalization, with Brookfield's infrastructure capital. Data center demand has surged as AI workloads drive exponential power consumption, creating a bottleneck for hyperscalers and cloud providers searching for sites with utility-scale electricity access. The Kentucky location offers both existing transmission infrastructure and proximity to regional power grids.

The $100 billion figure represents combined capital deployment across power generation, grid upgrades, and campus construction over multiple phases. Neither company disclosed a timeline for first operations or capacity targets in megawatts.