Looking for a quick fix for their fast-growing electricity diets, tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly, avoiding a potentially longer and more expensive process of hooking into a fraying electric grid that serves everyone else.

US data centers will need 55 gigawatts of new power capacity within the next five years, according to a report released this week by Bloom Energy. The report, based on a survey of 100 data center leaders, also shows that 30% of all sites will be using onsite power by 2030.

This week's announcement by President Donald Trump of a massive private-sector investment to build more AI data centers casts a spotlight on a relatively small and nimble class of cloud computing firms positioned to play a bigger role in the tech sector.