Day: July 28, 2025

• For a large swath of the US, data centers are driving energy prices higher.
• Wholesale electricity prices are up 22% from 2024.
• Ratepayer advocates warn Big Tech’s energy demand is hitting consumer wallets.

Your electric bills may have shot up in recent months, and you might be tempted to blame your roommate, who never turns the lights off, or your old window air conditioner unit.

It’s not because of your roommate. It’s not your window unit. It’s actually Big Tech’s fault.

Customers of the biggest regional power grid operator in the US could see their bills go up next year, largely due to skyrocketing demand for electricity coming from AI data centers.

Last week, PJM Interconnection closed its annual capacity auction with prices for wholesale electric capacity up 22% from 2024, another record-breaking year. As a result, monthly electric bills in PJM’s territory, which covers 67 million customers, could increase up to 5% next year, the grid operator said.

PJM Interconnection territory spans thirteen states from the Midwest to the East Coast— including all or parts of Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Every year, PJM’s summer auction determines the cost of wholesale electricity for the following year. Though its territory doesn’t cover the entire US, the energy industry looks at the PJM auction as a bellwether for electricity prices for the entire country.

PJM’s territory includes Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia, home to the world’s biggest concentration of data centers. It also includes areas of the country where data centers are rapidly expanding, such as Columbus, Ohio. The grid operator identified data center expansion as the primary driver of demand in its territory, which caused the jump in wholesale electricity prices.

After a decade of little to no growth, electricity demand in the US is expected to grow 2.5% annually through 2035, driven largely by data centers, according to the Bank of America Institute.

Utility bills are climbing faster than the pace of inflation, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That trend is expected to continue through the next year.

In Maryland, People’s Counsel David Lapp has been urging state and federal regulators to intervene on behalf of residential utility customers and small businesses.

“We are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from residential utility customers to large corporations—data centers and large utilities and their corporate parents, which profit from building additional energy infrastructure,” said Lapp. “Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis.”

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• Snowflake aims for operational efficiency and AI product development under CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy.
• Snowflake reported its first billion-dollar quarter in May and a 70% stock increase over last year.
• Snowflake plans to hire early-career talent and use its acquisitions to boost AI capabilities.

As tech companies across the industry get more hardcore and focus on efficiency, Snowflake is doing the same in the age of AI.

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy spoke with Business Insider about the company’s plan to become more operationally efficient while building more AI products. He says Snowflake increased the focus on metrics, made changes to the sales team, and plans to hire more early-career talent to be more efficient.

In May, the cloud data warehousing company reported that it hit its first billion-dollar quarter and doubled its profitability to 9% from 4%. And over the past year, Snowflake’s stock has been up about 70%.

“I think we had a real opportunity to help our customers realize the power of their data by agentic applications,” Ramaswamy told BI. “I think our big challenge is we need to be seen as the best partner for helping companies transform themselves.”

Ramaswamy joined Snowflake in 2023 through the acquisition of search startup Neeva, which he cofounded. Early last year, he became CEO, replacing Frank Slootman, who retired last year. With his experience from Neeva, Ramaswamy brought in his chops in search and AI.

“The appointment of Sridhar was a huge step in a direction where we really acknowledge the AI revolution that is happening around us,” Artin Avanes, head of core data platform at Snowflake, told BI.

Snowflake sets performance targets

Last year, Snowflake set up a program to be clearer in its performance expectations by instituting objectives and key results. Ramaswamy said that he hopes this leads to “clearer accountability.”

“I’m a big believer in saying what you’re going to do and doing what you’re saying. We have instituted OKRs,” Ramaswamy said. “Every team underneath has a longer list of objectives and key results that they want to accomplish. The first change is this culture of accountability. We state what is important for the company.”

Snowflake made changes to its sales teams

Snowflake has also been growing its sales team and making several workplace changes. In March, it brought in Mike Gannon as its chief revenue officer. Gannon has worked at Dell, VMware, and Broadcom.

Gannon has publicly spoken about focusing on accountability through weekly metric tracking of sales productivity and using technology to be more efficient. For example, he told investors that he aims to get new sales representatives productive in six months, rather than a year, by using AI. The company has also tracked the number of phone calls and in-person meetings it’s had.

“We continue to drive efficiency as an ongoing thing,” Ramaswamy said.

Gannon also plans to work with more resellers, something that Mizuho analysts said Snowflake has historically not had as much success with.

Besides that, Snowflake has consolidated overlapping projects and worked to bring teams together by pairing up specific product groups with sales specialists, Ramaswamy said.

“We have a culture of greater urgency when it comes to new products in areas like AI, and working closer with go-to-market teams to take these products to market,” Ramaswamy said.

Snowflake is hiring early-career talent

Ramaswamy said that Snowflake plans to expand its profitability in 2026. One way to do that is to hire more early-career talent.

“They have the same value, and they tend to be more knowledgeable about things like AI tools,” Ramaswamy said. “That is one thing we can expand on to be operationally efficient.”

Snowflake has also used acquisitions of smaller startups to attract talent. Earlier this year, it acquired Crunchy Data. Ramaswamy said that Snowflake’s previous CEO, Slootman, called its acquisition strategy “stem cell acquisitions,” meaning it would acquire a small startup to initiate progress in a certain technological area, such as search or AI.

This includes past acquisitions like Neeva, Datavolo, Samooha, and Openflow. Ramaswamy said that they “fill gaps” in the company’s product offerings.

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