Williams Companies (WMB) is the natural gas pipeline giant in the “SpaceX secret rent check” basket from Takeover Targets, and it is the name with the most direct link to the AI power story the promo leans on.
The Natural Gas Pipeline Giant
Williams Companies operates one of the largest natural gas pipeline systems in the United States, moving roughly a third of the country’s gas through a network that stretches from the producing basins to the demand centers. With a market value around $90.6 billion, it is the largest of the four picks, and its scale gives it a reach that smaller midstream operators cannot match.
The company is also the pick most closely tied to the promo’s most concrete claim: that it is involved in building power plants for a major technology customer. The pitch frames Williams as the infrastructure layer that delivers gas to the generation sites that will feed data centers, which makes it the name where the “rent check” hook comes closest to a real, nameable demand driver.
The Numbers From the Tease
The promo quoted Williams at $72.80, and at the October 27 close it traded at $74.09, up 1.77%. That places it in the same camp as the rest of the basket, modestly above its tease price, with a dividend yield in the middle of the roughly 4% to 7% range the four names collectively carry.
The premium is not dramatic, but it is notable that none of these names has sold off since the ad ran. A basket of income stocks holding its tease prices during a stretch when growth names were repricing tells you the market is treating them as defensive cash-flow names rather than momentum plays, which is a fair description of what they actually are.
How It Fits the Rent Check Thesis
Jovine’s hook borrows the June 2024 story of a “landlord” that profited by supplying power to a high-profile AI buildout in Memphis. The teardown we wrote, which you can read here, makes two clarifications that matter. The landlord from that original story is a different company, one not being sold here, and SpaceX is one customer among thousands rather than a direct material tenant of these four names.
What is real for Williams is the natural gas demand underneath the AI story. Data centers are pulling more power, gas is the marginal fuel filling that gap, and the companies that pipe the gas to the power plants collect a fee on the volume. Our data center power piece lays out that demand in full, and it is the strongest part of the pitch’s underlying case.
Risks Worth Weighing
Williams is less diversified than Enterprise Products Partners, and its fortunes lean on natural gas demand, which is cyclical in its own way even if pipeline volumes are steadier than producer cash flows. The AI power story is real but incremental, and a pipeline giant’s growth is measured in expansions that take years to permit and build. For the utility counterpart in the same basket, see our Entergy piece.
The Gas-to-Power Buildout
The most concrete claim in the whole basket belongs to Williams: that the company is involved in building power plants for a major technology customer. That is a different kind of story from a vague “rent check.” It is a nameable, capital-heavy project that ties the pipeline giant directly to the data-center demand the pitch is selling, and it is the reason Williams gets the most attention of the four.
The nuance is that even a real power plant is one project against a $90 billion company. Williams’ core business is moving natural gas across the country, and the gas-to-power buildout is a growth layer on top of that, not a replacement for it. A single data-center campus, even a large one, moves the needle modestly at that scale. What matters more is whether the broader trend holds: more gas-fired generation across many sites, each one a new source of pipeline volume. If that trend persists, Williams is well positioned. If it is really just a handful of projects, the story is smaller than the hook suggests. The distinction is the difference between a genuine tailwind and a headline.
Williams is the basket’s growth idea, and it is the one name where the AI power story has a specific, nameable expression in the form of gas-fired plants for a major technology customer. The rest of the company is a steady pipeline business that will grow with gas demand whether or not the data-center boom delivers on its more theatrical promises. The combination is what makes it the most interesting of the four, and also the one where the story can get ahead of the business.
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