US utility company NextEra Energy has revealed that it has 20GW of interest from large load users in its Q4 earnings call, predominantly from hyperscale data center customers. Of the 20GW, 9GW is in the advanced discussions phase.

In the call, the company also said it is targeting 15GW of new generation for data center hubs by 2035 through the "15 by 35" origination channel, with current discussions covering 20 hubs. NextEra management said it expects this figure to double to 40 by the end of the year.

“We have 20 data center hubs that we're developing currently, trying to expand that to 40. Small developers just don't have that. So we're in a great spot, and I couldn't be less concerned,” John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra, said during the call.

To power the increased load, the company said it has added 8.7GW of new generation over 2025, including what it said was a Q4 record of 3.6GW. The company also reported that it had a backlog of approximately 30GW of generation assets seeking a connection. In addition, the company reported that it placed more than 2GW of battery energy into service in 2025, which was a 220 percent increase from the year before. BESS now forms one-third of the utility's 30GW backlog.

Ketchum said that the utility’s robust renewables and storage portfolio, “provides [NextEra] with a speed-to-market solution to get the initial phase of the data center off the ground and built.”

The utility also said it had identified 6GW of small modular reactor co-location opportunities, split between the company’s existing nuclear sites and potential greenfield opportunities. The utility claimed that it was now looking into how an SMR could fit into a long-term solution around a data center hub.

In addition to supplying data centers through the grid, the company has signed several exclusive agreements with data center providers to supply them with energy.

At the end of last year, NextEra expanded a partnership with Google Cloud to develop several gigawatt-scale data center campuses and the associated generation and capacity needed to power them. The deal builds on an established partnership between the two companies, with more than 3.5GW of power in operation or under contract. In October, the two companies signed a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement to support the restart of the 615MW Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa.

Last year, the company also signed 2.5GW of clean energy contracts with Meta across the US, covering 11 Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) and two Energy Storage Agreements (ESA).