Bloom Energy Is Riding the Data Center Boom to a $25 Billion Backlog. Plug Power Is Passing on It. Here's Why.

Two fuel cell companies face the same AI-driven power opportunity, but they're taking opposite paths. Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) has lined up $25 billion in financing to chase the data center boom head-on. Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG) is largely sitting this one out.

The reason this matters is simple: Data center electricity demand is still accelerating. Artificial intelligence data centers are projected to consume 11.8% of total U.S. electricity by 2030, and power providers will have to scramble to meet that demand.

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Bloom Energy is moving directly into the power bottleneck. Plug Power is focusing on its existing hydrogen businesses and aiming to achieve profitability first.

So which strategy will pay off sooner?

How Bloom Energy's fuel cells landed a $25 billion boost

Let's start with Bloom Energy's core product: the Bloom Energy Server.

The concept is simple. In many existing power generation technologies, fuel is burned, and the resulting heat, in whatever form it takes, is converted into kinetic energy. That energy drives a turbine, a generator, or another mechanical system that ultimately produces electricity. It's a lengthy process, even without all the trouble of storing, transporting, and receiving the generated electricity.

Bloom's Energy Server skips combustion entirely, using solid oxide fuel cells to turn natural gas, biogas, or hydrogen directly into electricity. Installed on-site, it also bypasses the grid, eliminating the need for substations, transmission lines, or interconnection queues. That makes it a golden opportunity for data centers.

Bloom has also steadily pushed efficiency and durability gains across successive generations of its Energy Server. Furthermore, in the company's second-quarter 2026 earnings release, CEO KR Sridhar said that every major U.S. hyperscaler and more than a dozen U.S. neoclouds, AI labs, and colocation data center operators have validated and approved Bloom's power solutions for their AI factories. "Bloom is now a standard for AI onsite power," he said.

Bloom also has a major financing advantage. Brookfield Asset Management just expanded its agreement with Bloom to fund AI-related power infrastructure projects, increasing the total to $25 billion. That gives Bloom access to substantial third-party project financing.