Warren puts Big Tech's power bill on blast

The AI power bill just got political

Elizabeth Warren is back on the warpath, and this time the target is the electricity bill behind AI. On Tuesday, she said a single AI data center can burn through as much power as 100,000 households, and she wants to know why utility customers — aka regular humans with toaster ovens — should help pay for the grid upgrades.

Big Tech, meet the utility pole

The senators first kicked off an investigation in December 2025, and now Warren is revving it back up with fresh pressure on Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix. The core accusation is pretty blunt: utilities may be passing along the cost of new substations, transmission lines, and other infrastructure upgrades to consumers while the cloud giants keep building like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Why investors should care

If lawmakers and regulators decide data centers should shoulder more of those costs, that could ripple through:

• hyperscaler margins
• data center REIT economics
• AI infrastructure buildout plans
• utility rate structures across fast-growing markets

In other words, this is more than a political side quest. The AI boom has been treated like a straight line up and to the right, but electricity is one of the few things that can actually slow the party down.

The bigger picture

Companies involved are already arguing they pay their own power bills, and some research has found no smoking gun showing households are subsidizing them. But when the conversation shifts from “how fast can we build?” to “who pays for the wiring?” investors should pay attention. That’s where dreamland meets the permit office. Big picture: AI still needs enormous amounts of juice, and now Washington wants to peek under the hood.