By Avi Salzman

As the kingpins of artificial intelligence scramble to secure electricity for their data centers, CEO Joe Dominguez has the goods. His Baltimore-based Constellation Energy is on the brink of producing more electricity than any company on earth.

Constellation produces most of its power with 21 nuclear reactors spread across several states, accounting for about a quarter of America's nuclear generation. It also owns wind farms and hydroelectric plants. And it's now acquiring one of the country's biggest operators of natural-gas plants, Houston-based Calpine. When that deal closes, likely before year end, tens of millions of households across the country will depend on Constellation to keep the lights on.

Yet the company is far from a household name; in most places, its logo isn't even on customer bills. When CEO Dominguez visited the White House in May, President Donald Trump was surprised to learn of Constellation's sheer size. "That's very impressive. I didn't know that," said Trump, before telling Dominguez, "You're so modest."

"That's normally not said about me, Mr. President," Dominguez replied.

Dominguez has reason to be immodest. Constellation was barely on anyone's radar three years ago, when it spun out of utility Exelon. The utility held on to its regulated businesses, including transmission wires and customer service, while Constellation took over the power-generation business. Unlike regulated utilities, which control about half the country's electricity generation, independent power producers like Constellation sell electricity directly to corporations, or to consumers at prices determined in competitive auctions. Power producers' fortunes tend to rise and fall with supply and demand.

Constellation stock has followed electricity demand in one direction: up, up, up. Since its debut in 2022, the stock has rocketed more than 750%, giving the company a market value of $125 billion. That has come as Dominguez has signed eye-catching deals with both Meta Platforms and Microsoft to buy power from Constellation's reactors for their AI data centers. Tech companies need the clean, reliable power Constellation produces, and they are willing to pay a premium for it. Any investor looking for ways to cash in on AI's insatiable demand for power has invariably come across its name.

There's good reason to keep believing in the company. AI's demands for electricity look to be dwarfing anything from past eras. By some estimates, power demand from AI data centers could rise tenfold by 2030, an increase equivalent to adding 45 nuclear reactors. Dominguez is taking clear steps to make the most of that market and, equally important, to minimize the risks. As he knows well, a half-dozen major power companies have gone bankrupt over the past two decades chasing what they thought would be the next unstoppable wave of electricity demand. What if the AI wave crashes? Dominguez doesn't intend to repeat that history.

In a series of interviews with Barron's over the past month, Dominguez laid out how Constellation can turn the company's short-term sugar rush of revenue into a long-term growth story. First, he needs to be mindful of who has the real power in the industry. "The companies that I'm trying to call my clients are worth $3.5 trillion or $4 trillion. They could spend in a year the entire market capitalization of my company," he says. "How do we chase that tiger down, now that we've got it by the tail?"

One answer is to bulk up. In January, Constellation agreed to buy privately held Calpine for $26.6 billion in stock and cash. Constellation stock has climbed over 30% since the announcement, a boon to Calpine's owners. The deal is on track to close within the next few weeks, assuming the Department of Justice has no last-minute objections.

The acquisition will boost Constellation's potential electricity output by some 80%. Calpine owns 61 natural-gas plants from coast to coast, big battery-storage installations, and the country's largest geothermal resource, a steam-filled reservoir called the Geysers in northern California. It pumps out steam at such a steady rate that it could power all of San Francisco, Calpine says.

In all, the deal will leave Constellation as the face of modern power generation, providing enough electricity to serve over 40 million homes. It will sell much of that electricity to commercial and industrial companies, including data centers.

Dominguez, 63, is a new kind of energy CEO. Rather than coming up through exploration, refining, or plant management, he earned his spurs in the legal affairs side of the business, and then in governmental relations. That has left him well equipped to address the industry's current challenges.

A son of Cuban immigrants raised in Union City, N.J., he studied engineering in college and went to law school with the intention of becoming a patent attorney. But he soon found something more exciting: He took a job as an assistant U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, prosecuting murder-for-hire and money-laundering cases.

It was his legal skills that got him in the door at Exelon in 2002. He became a problem-solver for a company with plenty of legal headaches, from badly delayed power-plant projects to superfund site cleanups. Some cases were literally radioactive. The state of Illinois sued Exelon after finding tritium in the water near one of its nuclear reactors.

Then as now, Dominguez had the sharp speaking style of a successful prosecutor, and he could break complicated concepts down into understandable terms, colleagues say. Soon the company put him in charge of governmental relations, where the controversies were no less heated. Exelon beat back proposals looking to freeze electricity rates in Illinois, and Dominguez helped get controversial nuclear-energy subsidies passed in Illinois and New York.

The same arguments that worked in New York and Illinois led to game-changing federal legislation. In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act introduced tax subsidies for nuclear plants that effectively created a price floor for their power.

Those tax credits saved the nuclear industry from disappearing, one rusty reactor at a time. A dozen U.S. reactors shut down from 2012 to 2021, largely because they couldn't compete in short-term power auctions against cheaper natural gas and renewables, despite their value as baseload electricity generators. But since the tax credits were approved in 2022, no more have closed -- and two companies have even announced plans to reopen reactors that were already shut down. The tax credits are a major reason Constellation had the confidence starting in 2023 to say it can grow its base earnings by at least 10% a year through the end of the decade.

The nuclear subsidies survived Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, even as wind and solar credits were eliminated. Nuclear power is one of the few areas in energy that has maintained support through both Republican and Democratic administrations. The public, too, now likes nuclear power: The industry's favorability rating climbed to 61% this year, up from 44% in 2016, according to Gallup.

Dominguez has emerged from all this as a leading ambassador for the industry. "He's very smart, can explain complex subjects easily, and understands the whole energy system," says Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, which advised Constellation on the Calpine deal. "He's got gas and nuclear and renewables. To understand the give and take of all of those things" is particularly valuable, he adds.

"There's a lot of regulatory morass surrounding the utility industry, especially surrounding nuclear plants. But Joe's a very clear thinker, he cuts through the nonsense," says Doug Kimmelman, founder of private-equity firm Energy Capital Partners, which is selling Calpine to Constellation.

Kimmelman also credits Dominguez with convincing Trump and his top energy staff of other policies, including speeding up permitting for nuclear reactors. "I think he single-handedly has educated [the president] on the benefits of nuclear," adds Kimmelman, a large Republican donor who said he has spoken to Trump about Dominguez. The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

Dominguez's own politics are harder to pigeonhole. He has donated money to politicians in both parties.

He praised Trump effusively at an Oval Office signing ceremony for nuclear executive orders in May, saying that the president's Energy Dominance council has made permitting energy projects easier. "You're the best at building big things," he told Trump. And Dominguez has opposed some environmental rules, criticizing states whose net-zero carbon policies depend heavily on expanding solar and wind power. He considers that strategy unrealistic.

But he views climate change as an urgent issue that energy companies need to address head on, putting him at odds with the Trump administration. Dominguez publicly criticized power-plant owners who opposed emissions rules introduced in 2023 under the Biden administration. Now Trump is working on repealing all carbon emission standards for the power industry.

Trump may be reversing climate rules today, but Dominguez expects them to come back. Power companies that ignore their climate impacts will eventually face financial repercussions, he argues. "The fact that someone doesn't want to talk about climate today doesn't mean that climate isn't being talked about every day with customers and in the boardroom," he says.

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October 17, 2025 01:00 ET (05:00 GMT)

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