US President Donald Trump is all set to revive the country’s struggling coal industry. Last month, he signed a series of executive orders so that the government could meet the surging energy demand of AI data centers. Executive Order 14241 will allow several older coal-fired plants about to retire to continue generating power for the foreseeable future. This will be done to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence.
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Repeatedly promoting coal as a power source for data centers, Trump told the World Economic Forum in January that he would be approving power plants for AI through an emergency declaration. He also called on tech companies to use coal as a backup power source.
“They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal.”
However, with the tech industry investing billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and leveraging nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand, the use of coal is actually against the tech companies’ environmental goals.
Nevertheless, the tech industry does acknowledge that fossil fuel generation will eventually be needed to help navigate the electricity demand from AI. However, these companies are focusing on natural gas as it emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power.
“To have the energy we need for the grid, it’s going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time. We’re not surprised by the fact that we’re going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term.”
-Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers.
Other companies, such as Anthropic, have stated that there are a broader set of options available than just coal. “
We would certainly consider it but I don’t know if I’d say it’s at the top of our list.”
-Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds. The hedge fund data is as of Q4 2024.
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11. Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ:AUR)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 22
Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ:AUR) is a self-driving technology company. On Monday, May 19, Cantor Fitzgerald maintained a positive outlook on the stock with an “Overweight” rating and a $12.00 price target. The company has recently achieved a significant milestone by launching its commercial self-driving service, Aurora Driver, in Texas. This milestone not only aligns with the management’s projected timeline but also places the company as the first to introduce self-driving trucks in the United States.
Aurora will also be deemed a pioneer in operating a commercial autonomous driving service with heavy-duty trucks on public roads in the country. The company has announced plans to extend its driverless services by the end of the year. Its Autonomy Performance Indicator (API), a metric used to track the performance and readiness of autonomous vehicle systems, has reached 95% in the first quarter of 2025. This figure exceeds Aurora’s commercialization goal of 90%, a win for the company, which underscores its advancement in delivering reliable self-driving technology.
10. Elastic N.V. (NYSE:ESTC)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 64
Elastic N.V. (NYSE:ESTC) is a search AI company offering cloud-based solutions. On May 19, the company announced that Elasticsearch, Elastic’s open source, distributed search and analytics engine, has integrated with the new NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design. The collaboration aims to enhance enterprises’ capabilities in building and deploying on-premises AI factories. This will be done through a recommended vector database designed to handle AI agents and generative AI applications efficiently.
“We are obsessed with building the best vector database in the market. NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated designs enable Elastic customers to unlock faster, more relevant insights from their data.”
-Ken Exner, chief product officer at Elastic.
