New York, Feb 24, 2026, 17:17 EST — After-hours
- Alphabet Class C shares (GOOG) hovered near $310.92 after hours, showing little movement.
- Google signed fresh energy deals linked to its data centers in Texas and Minnesota.
- Next up, traders are watching Nvidia’s results on Wednesday, looking for cues on the AI trade.
Alphabet Class C dipped in after-hours Tuesday. Google’s recent power-supply steps for U.S. data centers landed as big tech sentiment stayed shaky.
Suddenly, it’s not chips but electricity that’s emerging as the choke point for data center growth. Alphabet, for its part, is warning investors that capital expenditures will spike in 2026 as the company scrambles to expand AI and cloud infrastructure.
Google pitched the Minnesota deal as a model for bringing in fresh clean energy, saying its Clean Energy Accelerator Charge contract keeps local ratepayers off the hook for the bill.
GOOG closed at $310.88, slipping 0.26%. Shares moved within a range of $312.28 to $306.20, according to data. On Monday, the stock dropped 1.02%.
Xcel Energy has lined up a deal to supply Google’s new Pine Island data center in Minnesota, tapping 1,900 megawatts of fresh clean-power resources—split across 1,400 MW of wind, 200 MW of solar, and 300 MW in long-duration storage. Google is also putting $50 million into Xcel’s battery program as part of the agreement. “Our commitment to Minnesota goes beyond building infrastructure,” said Amanda Peterson Corio of Google in the statement. Xcel Energy Newsroom
Google’s Wilbarger County data center in Texas is going up alongside new clean energy from AES, part of what the companies call a “power first” co-location strategy. The power comes under 20-year purchase agreements. Kleber Costa, an executive at AES, said the deal gives Google a site “fully ready for construction.” For his part, Google’s Andrew Hart described Texas as “at the center of the world’s AI leadership.”
These deals drop into a sector-wide arms race. Google is stacking up power contracts with a spread of utilities and developers, while competitors—Meta, Microsoft, Amazon’s AWS—are also inking similar agreements to fuel their growing fleets of AI-driven data centers.
Alphabet shares picked up renewed support Monday after Wells Fargo bumped the stock to “overweight” and hiked its target to $387. Analyst Kevin Gawreski cited “hyperscaler ambitions are bounded by compute capacity,” highlighting Google’s heavy investment in infrastructure. Investors.com
It’s been a choppy stretch. After sliding on Monday, U.S. stocks snapped back Tuesday—Nasdaq finished 1.05% higher, as some traders stepped in to “buy on the dip,” according to Matthew Keator of the Keator Group. Reuters
Monday saw a selloff, with markets jittery on fresh worries about AI’s potential blowback for the economy and choppy signals on trade. “The question about AI is twofold: How much is it going to cost, and who all is going to be disrupted?” said Tom Hainlin, national investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, speaking to Reuters. Reuters
The risks aren’t tough to spot here. Heavier data-center demand could put Alphabet under the microscope—politicians and regulators eye grid costs and potential upgrades. Then there’s the company’s own capital outlays, which keep margins squeezed. On another front, European regulators have highlighted issues with Google’s search ad auction process. Advertisers have a deadline of March 2 to respond, according to Reuters.
Nvidia’s numbers hit Wednesday, a key gauge for traders watching AI appetite. On the regulatory side, attention turns to forthcoming steps on new data-center power contracts — filings related to the Minnesota deal are part of that — for clues on Google’s buildout pace.
