The “SpaceX secret rent check” pitch is, at its core, an AI power demand story wearing an income-investing costume. The four “landlords” it sells are really a way to buy the electricity and natural gas buildout that the data-center boom is pulling forward.
Why Data Centers Need So Much Power
Modern data centers are enormous electricity consumers. The servers that train and run AI models draw power at a scale that dwarfs the warehouses of a decade ago, and the industry is adding capacity faster than the grid can keep up in some regions. Every new cluster of GPUs needs electricity delivered, cooled, and backed up, and that demand flows through utilities, pipelines, and power generation in ways that are only starting to show up in earnings.
The demand is real and it is large. Power-hungry AI buildouts are landing in the Gulf South, Texas, and other regions with cheap energy and available land, and the utilities and midstream companies serving those regions are the ones positioned to collect. That is the substance underneath the promo’s more theatrical “rent check” framing.
How the Four Picks Expose That Demand
The basket divides the AI power theme into two halves. On one side sits a regulated Gulf South electric utility, which collects approved returns on the grid investments that a surge in regional demand forces it to build. On the other sit three midstream names: a natural gas pipeline giant, a diversified MLP, and a high-yield gas and NGL operator, all of which move the fuel that feeds the gas-fired plants the new load requires.
None of these companies is a pure-play data-center stock. That is the honest read of the pitch. They are established energy infrastructure businesses whose existing assets happen to sit in the path of the AI buildout. The AI demand is a tailwind layered on top of businesses that were already collecting steady fees, which is both the appeal and the reason the growth should not be overstated. Our midstream sector piece compares the four names directly.
The Space Between the Hook and the Reality
The teardown of this promo, which you can read here, separates the hook from the substance. The June 2024 story the pitch borrows involved a specific “landlord” that profited by supplying power to a high-profile AI buildout in Memphis, but that landlord is a different company, one not being sold in this basket. And SpaceX, despite the name on the ad, is one customer among thousands rather than a direct material tenant of any of the four picks.
That matters because the pitch asks you to believe these companies are collecting rent directly from a marquee technology customer. The reality is more diffuse: they collect regulated returns and toll fees on the energy system as a whole, and the AI buildout is one of several demand drivers, alongside LNG exports, reshoring, and population growth in the Sun Belt.
What Investors Should Understand
The AI power theme is genuine, but it is slow-moving for the companies in this basket. A regulated utility recovers new investment over years through rate cases. A pipeline expansion takes years to permit and build. The stocks are income names first and growth names second, and treating them as a way to capture the data-center boom in real time risks disappointment. For the utility leg of the basket specifically, see our Entergy piece, and for the pipeline giant tied most directly to the AI power story, our Williams piece.
What Would Make the Story Accelerate
The honest caveat about the AI power theme is that it moves slowly for the companies in this basket, and the pitch does not dwell on that. A regulated utility recovers new investment through rate cases that play out over years. A pipeline expansion requires permits, rights of way, and construction timelines measured in the same units. The demand is real, but the translation from demand to earnings is the slow part, and it is the part income investors often forget.
What would change that is a genuine acceleration in grid buildout: utilities getting faster cost recovery, regulators approving more gas generation, and midstream companies pulling expansion projects forward to meet load growth they can already see on their systems. Some of that is happening at the margin, which is why the sector has come alive after years of being written off. But the pace is still set by permitting and rate cases, not by the urgency of a data-center operator that wants power tomorrow. Investors who want the data-center boom in real time will find this basket too slow, and investors who want durable income with a real tailwind will find it about right.
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