Looking for a quick fix for their fast-growing electricity diets, tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly, avoiding a potentially longer and more expensive process of hooking into a fraying electric grid that serves everyone else.

This week's announcement by President Donald Trump of a massive private-sector investment to build more AI data centers casts a spotlight on a relatively small and nimble class of cloud computing firms positioned to play a bigger role in the tech sector.

Data center builds typically have timelines of 18 to 24 months, gas and renewable power plans have timelines of three to five years, and new transmission development can take seven to ten years. In fact, it’s the power transmission grid that’s often the biggest constraint, the research firm says, more even than the power generation capacity.

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance is planning to build what could become the world’s largest data center in Jamnagar, India, with a capacity of 3 gigawatts to capitalize on surging AI demand.

The unit of Blackstone dedicated to investments in the energy industry has agreed to acquire Potomac Energy Center, the asset manager told Reuters on Thursday, in a deal symbolizing the allure to investors of power plants sited near data centers.