NEW YORK — The two companies could not look more different on a map. NextEra Energy dominates the sun-soaked utility business of Florida, while Dominion Energy’s territory runs through the coal country and data-center corridors of Virginia and the Carolinas. On May 18, the two were in talks to become one company, in what would be the largest deal in the history of the U.S. power industry.
NextEra is negotiating to acquire Dominion for about $66 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The transaction, structured mostly as a stock swap with a small cash component, would value Dominion at roughly $76 per share. NextEra would exchange about 0.8 of its own shares for each Dominion share, and NextEra shareholders would own about 75 percent of the combined company.
The deal, if completed, would create a utility giant spanning the southeastern United States, with generation, transmission, and retail businesses from Florida to Ohio. It would also be a bet that the power industry’s biggest problem — meeting surging electricity demand from data centers and artificial intelligence — is best solved at scale.
Electricity demand is growing at a pace the industry has not seen in decades. Data centers, which house the servers that train and run AI models, consume enormous amounts of power, and utilities across the country are racing to build new generation and transmission capacity to serve them. NextEra’s chief executive has been among the loudest voices describing this boom, saying the company’s pipeline of renewable projects is booked years into the future.
Dominion sits at the center of that demand. Northern Virginia, where the company serves customers, is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, and Dominion has been adding capacity to keep up. But the company has struggled to fund that growth without raising customer rates, a politically sensitive subject in a state where regulators and legislators have pushed back on utility bills.
Combining the two companies would solve some of those problems. NextEra brings a lower cost of capital, a disciplined approach to project development, and a portfolio of solar, wind, and battery projects that can supply the power Dominion’s customers need. Dominion brings regulated rate bases, transmission assets, and a customer base that includes some of the most power-hungry companies in the world.
“The logic is straightforward,” one energy analyst said. “NextEra needs load growth, and Dominion has it. Dominion needs capital, and NextEra can raise it cheaply. The question is whether the regulators will let them do it.”
Regulatory approval is the biggest hurdle. Utility mergers require sign-off from state regulators in every state where the companies operate, as well as federal approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The combination would face scrutiny in Virginia, where Dominion is the dominant utility and where consumer advocates have questioned the company’s rate increases.
The political climate for big utility deals has been mixed. Some state regulators have approved mergers that promised investment in grid reliability, while others have rejected them over concerns about rates and competition. The NextEra-Dominion combination would be by far the largest test of that appetite, and executives at both companies are said to be preparing for a long review process.
The deal would also reshape the industry’s pecking order. NextEra is already the largest U.S. utility by market value, and absorbing Dominion would widen the gap between it and rivals such as Duke Energy and Southern Company. The combined company would own one of the largest regulated electric businesses in the country, alongside one of the largest portfolios of renewable generation.
The proposed terms suggest the two sides have already done a lot of work. The exchange ratio — 0.8 NextEra share for each Dominion share — and the $76-per-share valuation imply a premium to Dominion’s recent trading levels, according to people familiar with the matter. The structure, mostly stock, would let NextEra conserve cash while giving Dominion shareholders a stake in the combined company’s upside.
Talks are ongoing and could still collapse, the people cautioned. Utility mergers of this size take time, and any number of issues — price, governance, regulatory strategy — could still derail the negotiations. Both companies declined to comment.
If the deal closes, the work will just be beginning. Integrating two utilities with different cultures, systems, and regulatory relationships is a multiyear project, and utility mergers have a history of disappointing investors who underestimated the difficulty. Analysts said the combined company’s management would face pressure to show that the promised synergies are real.
The broader message of the talks is that the power industry is consolidating for a reason. The scale of investment required for the energy transition — new generation, new transmission, new technology — is beyond what many midsize utilities can fund on their own. Mergers let them pool resources, cut costs, and borrow at better rates.
For customers, the implications are less clear. Mergers are supposed to produce efficiencies that hold down rates, but they can also produce higher bills as utilities invest more heavily in their networks. Virginia’s data-center boom has already pushed Dominion to raise rates, and consumer advocates are likely to scrutinize any plan that accelerates that spending.
The next few months will determine whether the deal becomes the industry’s biggest or one of its most talked-about failures. The two companies are said to be aiming for an announcement in the coming weeks, though the people familiar with the matter stressed that nothing is final. In the meantime, the rest of the industry is watching — and measuring itself against the prospect of a utility the size of both companies combined.
