Chevron, Engine No1 Announce Power Solution Partnership for US Data Centers

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Chevron, Engine No1 Announce Power Solution Partnership for US Data Centers

In a recent joint release, Chevron U.S.A Inc. and Engine No. 1 announced “the formation of a partnership to build a new company to develop scalable, reliable power solutions for U.S. based data centers running on U.S. natural gas”. The release highlighted that the joint development is “in conjunction with GE Vernova” and “aims to […]

The release highlighted that the joint development is “in conjunction with GE Vernova” and “aims to establish the first multi gigawatt-scale co-located power plant and data center during President Trump’s second term”.

The first projects are expected to leverage seven U.S. made GE Vernova 7HA natural gas turbines, secured under a slot reservation agreement, on an accelerated timeline, the release noted. The projects are expected to serve co-located data centers in the U.S. Southeast, Midwest, and West regions, the release added, stating that power generation is not designed to flow initially through the existing transmission grid, “reducing the risk of increasing electricity prices for consumers”.

According to the release, the joint development plans to deliver up to four gigawatts, “the equivalent of powering 3-3.5 million U.S. homes, with initial in-service targeted by the end of 2027 and potential for project expansion beyond this capacity”. The release noted that the projects are expected to be designed with the flexibility to integrate lower carbon solutions.

The release said the companies’ plans directly address the need for affordable, reliable energy to meet the significant demand for electricity to power U.S. data centers, enabling current and future generations of AI to be developed in the United States.

The joint release also stated that the joint development is expected to create thousands of jobs and help the reindustrialization of the United States.

Rigzone has asked Chevron, Engine No. 1, and GE Vernova what kind of jobs these are likely to be and roughly when recruitment will take place. At the time of writing, none of the companies have responded to Rigzone yet.

“We are proud to play our part in bringing to fruition President Trump’s vision for a new American golden age, powered by our enormous energy resources and unrivaled workforce,” Mike Wirth, chief executive officer and chairman, Chevron Corporation, said in the release.

“President Trump’s pro-American energy policies and commitment to energy and AI dominance give us the confidence to invest in projects that will create American jobs and strengthen our national security,” he added.

Chris James, founder and chief investment officer of Engine No. 1, said in the release, “energy is the key to America’s AI dominance”.

“By using abundant domestic natural gas to generate electricity directly connected to data centers, we can secure AI leadership, drive productivity gains across our economy, and restore America’s standing as an industrial superpower,” he added.

“This partnership with Chevron and GE Vernova addresses the biggest energy challenge we face,” he continued.

Scott Strazik, chief executive officer at GE Vernova, said in the release, “we are excited to enable the advancement of data center growth in the U.S. by supporting delivery of critical power needs to customers using innovative solutions”.

“GE Vernova is uniquely positioned to provide the energy systems and support required to make this large-scale endeavor possible, as the leading U.S. energy manufacturer,” he added.

In a separate release posted on its website on Wednesday, GE Vernova said it is planning to invest nearly $600 million in its U.S. factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands around the world.

The new investments are expected to create more than 1,500 new U.S. jobs, according to the release. GE Vernona noted in the release that the new investments are the first part of a larger $9 billion cumulative global capex and R&D investment plan through 2028 that was announced at the company’s investor update on December 10.

An executive order published on the White House website on January 23 states that it “revokes certain existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation, clearing a path for the United States to act decisively to retain global leadership in artificial intelligence”.

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Reports of SATA’s demise are overblown, but the technology is aging fast

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DCN becoming the new WAN for AI-era applications

“DCN is increasingly treated as an end-to-end operating model that standardizes connectivity, security policy enforcement, and telemetry across users, the middle mile, and cloud/application edges,” Sanchez said. Dell’Oro defines DCN as platforms and services that deliver consistent connectivity, policy enforcement, and telemetry from users, across the WAN, to distributed cloud and application edges spanning branch sites, data centers and public clouds. The category is gaining relevance as hybrid architectures and AI-era traffic patterns increase the operational penalty for fragmented control planes. DCN buyers are moving beyond isolated upgrades and are prioritizing architectures that reduce operational seams across connectivity, security and telemetry so that incident response and change control can follow a single thread, according to Dell’Oro’s research. What makes DCN distinct is that it links user-to-application experience with where policy and visibility are enforced. This matters as application delivery paths become more dynamic and workloads shift between on-premises data centers, public cloud, and edge locations. The architectural requirement is eliminating handoffs between networking and security teams rather than optimizing individual network segments. Where DCN is growing the fastest Cloud/application edge is the fastest-growing DCN pillar. This segment deploys policy enforcement and telemetry collection points adjacent to workloads rather than backhauling traffic to centralized security stacks. “Multi-cloud remains a reality, but it is no longer the durable driver by itself,” Sanchez said. “Cloud/application edge is accelerating because enterprises are trying to make application paths predictable and secure across hybrid environments, and that requires pushing application-aware steering, policy enforcement, and unified telemetry closer to workloads.”

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The U.S. data center market is entering 2026 with fundamentals that remain unmatched across commercial real estate, but the nature of the dominant constraint has shifted. Demand is no longer gated by capital, connectivity, or even land. It is gated by the ability to deliver very large blocks of power, on aggressive timelines, at a predictable cost. According to the CBRE 2026 U.S. Real Estate Market Outlook as overseen by Gordon Dolven and Pat Lynch, the sector is on track to post another record year for leasing activity, even as vacancy remains at historic lows and pricing reaches all-time highs. What has changed is the scale at which demand now presents itself, and the difficulty of meeting it. Large-Block Leasing Rewrites the Economics AI-driven workloads are reshaping leasing dynamics in ways that break from prior hyperscale norms. Where 10-MW-plus deployments once commanded pricing concessions, CBRE now observes the opposite behavior: large, contiguous blocks of capacity are commanding premiums. Neocloud providers, GPU-as-a-service platforms and AI startups, many backed by aggressive capital deployment strategies, are actively competing for full-building and campus-scale capacity. For operators, this is altering development and merchandising strategies. Rather than subdividing shells for flexibility, owners increasingly face a strategic choice: hold buildings intact to preserve optionality for single-tenant, high-density users who are willing to pay for scale. In effect, scale itself has become the scarce asset. Behind-the-Meter Power Moves to the Foreground For data centers, power availability meaning not just access, but certainty of delivery, is now the defining variable in the market. CBRE notes accelerating adoption of behind-the-meter strategies as operators seek to bypass increasingly constrained utility timelines. On-site generation using natural gas, solar, wind, and battery storage is gaining traction, particularly in deregulated electricity markets where operators have more latitude to structure BYOP (bring your own power) solutions.

Blue Origin targets enterprise networks with a multi-terabit satellite connectivity plan

“It’s ideal for remote, sparse, or sensitive regions,” said Manish Rawat, analyst at TechInsights. “Key use cases include cloud-to-cloud links, data center replication, government, defense, and disaster recovery workloads. It supports rapid or temporary deployments and prioritizes fewer customers with high capacity, strict SLAs, and deep carrier integration.” Adoption, however, is expected to largely depend on the sector. For governments and organizations operating highly critical or sensitive infrastructure, where reliability and security outweigh cost considerations, this could be attractive as a redundancy option. “Banks, national security agencies, and other mission-critical operators may consider it as an alternate routing path,” Jain said. “For most enterprises, however, it is unlikely to replace terrestrial connectivity and would instead function as a supplementary layer.” Real-world performance Although satellite connectivity offers potential advantages, analysts note that questions remain around real-world performance. “TeraWave’s 6 Tbps refers to total constellation capacity, not per-user throughput, achieved via multiple optical inter-satellite links and ground gateways,” Rawat said. “Optical crosslinks provide high aggregate bandwidth but not a single terabit-class pipe. Performance lies between fiber and GEO satellites, with lower intercontinental latency than GEO but higher than fiber.” Operational factors could also affect network stability. Jitter is generally low, but handovers, rerouting, and weather conditions can introduce intermittent performance spikes. Packet loss is expected to remain modest but episodic, Rawat added.

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

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