ACWA Power and EIG have formed Plenum Power, a partnership that will invest in United States power infrastructure, and expect to launch it with an initial equity commitment of about 4 billion dollars.
The two companies announced the venture on 29 October 2026. The platform will pursue opportunities across the American power sector, covering conventional and renewable generation, energy storage, acquisitions, the development of new capacity and upgrades to infrastructure already in place. Neither partner disclosed an ownership split, and the announcement set no capacity target.
R. Blair Thomas, chief executive of EIG, said the United States power industry is at an inflection point, with demand accelerating as artificial intelligence, data centres and electrification take hold. Dr Samir J Serhan, chief executive of the Saudi company, described the venture as an important step in expanding its international footprint. Andrew Ellenbogen, president of the American investor, said the partners are seeking to create a scaled United States power platform that can grow through acquisitions.
The structure says something about where capital is going. A Saudi independent power producer and an American energy investor are pooling equity to buy and build generation inside the United States rather than in an emerging market, which inverts the direction of travel that has characterised Gulf utility expansion for much of the past decade. The pull is demand. Data centre load growth has turned American power from a mature, slow growing sector into one where new capacity commands scarcity value, and that repricing is what makes a dollar of generation equity worth deploying there rather than elsewhere.
The breadth of the mandate matters as much as its size. By covering conventional generation alongside renewables and storage, and acquisitions alongside greenfield development, the platform is built to buy existing plant rather than wait out interconnection queues. That is the faster route to serving load that is arriving now, and it is the reason a vehicle of this kind is capitalised with equity at the outset rather than assembled project by project. It also hedges the technology question, since a portfolio that can own a gas plant and a battery is not dependent on which of them clears the market in any given year.
The partners bring complementary records to it. EIG has committed more than 14.2 billion dollars across power generation, renewables, energy storage and related energy transition infrastructure. ACWA Power is one of the largest independent power producers in the world and the largest private water desalination company, with 111 assets across 16 countries and 127 billion dollars of assets under management.
