On September 4, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Bloom Energy (BE), a developer of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), will join the S&P 500 alongside Illumina and Everpure, effective September 21. The index will remove Molson Coors, Builders FirstSource, and The Trade Desk. The news sent Bloom Energy shares sharply higher in after-hours trading.
The company’s stock has surged more than 2,000% over the past two years, powered by exploding electricity demand from AI data centers. What exactly has propelled this SOFC leader into the benchmark index? The answer comes down to three factors: speed, backlog, and competitive moat.
The AI data center build-out has exposed a critical constraint: power. Securing a transmission connection to a regional grid can take four to seven years, while severe shortages of high-voltage transformers and other infrastructure create massive backlogs. Community resistance to grid expansion costs has only pushed hyperscalers harder to find independent, off-grid power solutions.
Bloom Energy’s solid oxide fuel cells address this bottleneck directly. The fuel cells run on natural gas, biogas, propane, or pure hydrogen through an electrochemical reaction rather than combustion. Their biggest advantage is deployment speed: the units are factory-built and can be installed on-site in three to four months. In 2024, the company delivered a fuel cell power system for an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI data center in just 55 days. A recently introduced Power Connect solution further cuts on-site installation time by more than 40%.
Speed has translated directly into orders and financial results. In the second quarter, Bloom Energy’s quarterly revenue exceeded $1 billion for the first time. Management raised its full-year revenue guidance to a range of $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion, representing 100% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. Non-GAAP operating income guidance was lifted to between $800 million and $900 million.
The company’s backlog reached $20 billion at the end of 2025. Analysts expect full-year 2026 revenue to exceed $4.1 billion, more than double the 2025 level. Revenue grew from $1.5 billion in 2024 to $2.0 billion in 2025, a 37% increase that shows clear acceleration.
External capital has reinforced the growth story. On June 30, Brookfield Asset Management expanded its strategic partnership with Bloom Energy, raising the initial project financing framework from $5 billion to $25 billion—a fivefold increase. On July 20, Industrial Development Funding, together with Oaktree, MUFG, and Morgan Stanley, announced a $1.7 billion project investment to support deployment of Bloom’s fuel cells for Nebius’ AI infrastructure.
Bloom Energy is not the only producer of SOFCs, but it is the undisputed leader in stationary, multi-megawatt, utility-scale deployments. Data center operators including Oracle, CoreWeave, Nebius, and Equinix have adopted its fuel cell solutions. That early-mover advantage and proven ability to scale deployments form the core of Bloom Energy’s moat in the SOFC space.
Analysts project Bloom Energy’s 2026 earnings per share to reach $2.67, a 251% increase from $0.76 in 2025. EPS is expected to grow another 84% in 2027 and 60% in 2028. The stock currently trades at roughly 94 times expected earnings for this year and about 39 times next year’s adjusted EBITDA. That valuation is not cheap, but it rests on the assumption that the company’s staggering growth will continue.
As long as hyperscalers keep investing in data center construction at the current pace, Bloom Energy is well positioned to ride the powerful tailwind of AI-driven electricity demand. Inclusion in the S&P 500 is not just a recognition of past performance—it is a significant endorsement of the company’s long-term growth thesis.
