Serving this new type of customer has pushed GE Vernova to adapt, says Strazik. In a way, its gas prowess has opened the door for the company to sell other technologies. Big tech demand is pushing GE Vernova further down the power value chain, from turbines and grid equipment outside the data center toward electrical equipment and software closer to the rack.
The company logged $2.4 billion in equipment orders for data centers in the first quarter alone, more than it made in equivalent sales in the entirety of last year. And the company has grown its electrification R&D spending. Analysts project electrification will soon be the company’s second-biggest business. “We aren’t today providing any electrical equipment inside the data center, but we’re working on it,” he says.
Clean tech provides yet another source of optionality. Tech companies, for example, are increasingly ordering generators from GE Vernova outfitted for potential future carbon capture (though many barriers remain to actually retrofitting them so they can do that). The company has also made a long-term bet on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) as it works with partners to build its first in Canada and potentially many more in the U.S. The goal is to rebuild the nuclear supply chain that has fallen dormant in the U.S. to give SMRs a long-term future. And, at a time when wind has become a dirty word in Washington D.C., Strazik isn’t keen to abandon it. Today’s wind business is mostly servicing and repairing units that have already been installed. In the future, though, it could be something more. “This certainly isn’t the moment, in my view, that you walk from wind,” he says, adding that “it’s clearly at volume bottom, at least in the U.S.”
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