If anyone still needed a measure of how much onsite power the AI buildout is buying, Bloom Energy published one on 22 October. Revenue for the quarter ended 30 September was $1,235.8 million, 138.1 % more than a year earlier, and product revenue alone rose 179.4 % to $1,073.6 million.
The Numbers in the Release
- Non-GAAP gross margin 34.5 %, non-GAAP operating income $285.7 million, an operating margin of 23.1 % against 8.9 % a year before.
- Operating cash flow was negative at minus $27.1 million, with $153.5 million spent on plant and equipment; cash at the end of the quarter stood at about $2.5 billion.
- Full-year 2026 guidance raised for the third time this year: revenue of $4.4 to 4.6 billion and non-GAAP operating income of $960 million to $1.03 billion.
Chief executive KR Sridhar described the market as moving from central power stations to distributed onsite generation, with the hyperscalers first and other segments now following.
Time to Power Is the Selling Point
On the earnings call, as summarised by MarketBeat, management pointed to Oracle's site in Utah, which Bloom says it powered less than two months after the project was announced, and to equipment ready for the first block of Nebius's data center in New Jersey. The AEP plan to supply Google with about 700 MW of Bloom Energy Servers with carbon capture was also mentioned. Sridhar said the backlog is growing faster than revenue, without putting a figure on it, and that the Fremont plant is being extended for demand beyond the 5 GW manufacturing level the company has talked about before.
He also argued that the concentrated CO2 stream of a fuel cell makes carbon capture easier than on combustion plant, and that some customers would pay a premium of roughly 10 to 15 % for carbon-free power.
What It Does Not Replace
These are prime power units, running all the time as the main source or as a bridge until the grid arrives. A site built that way still needs an answer for the hour the fuel cells, the gas supply or the utility are not there, and on most campuses that answer is still a standby plant with its own fuel storage. The open question for designers is how the two are meant to work together: who carries a block load, how the switchover is tested, and which part of the site the permit treats as the emergency source.
Sources: Bloom Energy (Form 8-K, U.S. SEC), MarketBeat