Welcome to Moral Money, I’m Jennifer Hughes from the Lex team, standing in for Simon this week. Here’s a topic dear to the interests of both MM and Lex readers: AI, and how to power it, where already enormous numbers just seem to keep growing. This week that was writ large in the proposed $420bn merger of utilities giants NextEra and Dominion Energy. Ostensibly, the deal is all about gearing up to power more AI. But underneath, it shows a US pragmatism about the future mix of energy sources not always reflected in headline-grabbing caricatures of a fossil fuel and “woke” green debate. 

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A bigger dominion

NextEra is offering almost $76 a share for Dominion, a 23 per cent premium to its undisturbed price. The all-paper transaction, if approved by multiple regulators, values the Florida-to-Virginia combination at $420bn and will rank as the fourth-largest deal ever.