Surging Electrical Orders Confirm Data Center Power Shortage Trend

When GE Vernova and ABB both announced record quarterly orders in the same week, Wall Street analysts can finally declare: the power crisis triggered by artificial intelligence is no longer a distant narrative, but a current performance that has been realized in the financial statements.

These two power equipment giants, located on opposite sides of the Atlantic, both handed in a report card of "better than expected + guidance raising" in the first quarter of 2026 financial report, and the driving force is pointing to the same source—the demand for transformers, switching equipment, and power management systems in data centers is expanding at a speed that suppliers are caught off guard.

Order explosion: Electrification demand comprehensively exceeds expectations

GE Vernova's electrification department orders reached $7.1 billion in the first quarter, and the orders related to data centers alone reached $2.4 billion for the quarter, a figure that exceeded the total of data center orders for the entire year of 2025.

Morgan Stanley analyst David Arcaro raised the target price from $960 to $1,250, and wrote: "The target for 2028 should be seen as the lower limit of performance, rather than the upper limit."

On the other side of the Atlantic, Swiss industrial group ABB's electrification department orders surged by 51% year-on-year, with organic growth reaching 44%, nearly four times the consensus expectation. The increase in data center orders is described with a "three-digit" figure—ABB management refused to provide specific numbers, but this is enough to make investors understand.

ABB immediately raised its full-year revenue organic growth guidance from the original range of 6%-9% to the "high single-digit to low double-digit" range.

A market concern dissipated as the financial report season progressed. There were previous views that data center operators, against the backdrop of intensifying geopolitical uncertainty, are accelerating equipment locking to avoid risks in advance, and as a result, the order numbers may be inflated.

ABB management responded to these doubts in the telephone meeting. The company's executives stated that the current orders "are not front-loaded procurement induced by geopolitics, nor are they hoarding caused by supply chain anxiety." They added that large customers are actively diversifying supplier risks to avoid over-concentration, which actually broadens ABB's potential market.

"About 90% of ABB's business is unrelated to data centers, but it is also growing healthily," wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Phil Buller in his report, which shows that the overall electrification demand has a broad foundation."

Supply gaps, confirmed by both price and delivery time

What really makes analysts vigilant is not just the volume of orders, but also the price.

The new orders for gas turbines signed by GE Vernova in the first half of the year have seen prices rise by 10% to 20% compared to the last quarter of last year; the management is negotiating 30 to 35 framework agreements with customers for capacity in the 2030s, with the current locked-in price at $2,500 to $3,000 per kilowatt. Morgan Stanley in the report bluntly stated that "$3,000 may not be the ceiling."

GE Vernova disclosed that only about 10GW of available capacity slots remain for the years 2029 to 2030—just a few months ago, this gap was limited to the year 2029. In other words, customers are already competing for battlefield points from next year to the year after and even further.

ABB also confirmed this judgment. The company's management revealed in the financial report conference call that the current data center orders are expected to be delivered within 12 to 24 months. This means that the current explosion of orders will continue to be converted into revenue over the next two years.

Narrative shifts to EPS revision cycle

Looking back at the past three years, the evolution of this investment logic has its clear trajectory.

Between 2023 and 2024, with the emergence of ChatGPT, the power equipment sector welcomed the first wave of re-evaluation—the driving force was the narrative at that time: computing power explosion → large-scale data center construction → sharp increase in electricity usage → transformer shortage. The market priced this logic with forward discount, and the stock prices have risen significantly, but always accompanied by the skepticism