Constellation and Walmart announced a long-term agreement to deploy emissions-free nuclear power in Illinois. The agreement represents a power purchase arrangement securing baseload generation for a major datacenter operator.

The deal reflects a broader shift among large datacenters toward securing reliable, low-carbon generation capacity. As AI infrastructure buildout accelerates, operators are moving beyond spot market power procurement to lock in long-term supplies of emissions-free baseload energy, with nuclear increasingly positioned as a solution to meet both capacity and sustainability demands.

For the AI infrastructure sector, the Constellation-Walmart agreement signals growing competition for nuclear assets and reinforces that major cloud operators view secured nuclear PPAs as strategic infrastructure. This trend suggests datacenters will continue competing for available nuclear capacity to power their computational workloads, placing nuclear plants—particularly existing facilities—in higher demand as AI chips drive energy consumption growth.