Alibaba (BABA) reportedly held talks with Solaria (SLR SM) to potentially supply power for a data centre in Spain, Bloomberg reports

Hyperscaler power procurement has become a recurring theme as AI-driven data centre buildout collides with grid constraints, and the established pattern is for cloud operators to lock in dedicated generation, whether renewables, nuclear restarts, or long-dated PPAs, before or alongside capacity announcements. A talk-stage report of this kind is the earliest and loosest form: comparable episodes have tended to progress from sourcing discussions to a signed PPA or tolling arrangement, with the renewable developer re-rating on the contract news rather than on the talks themselves, since single-project agreements can represent an outsized share of a mid-cap generator's pipeline. The distinction that matters is between a merchant PPA, which transfers power price risk to the developer, and a structured deal with availability guarantees, which is closer to contracted cash flow. For the developer side, prior form in this theme has been sharp moves on confirmation and partial retracement if negotiations stall; for the hyperscaler, the read-through is capex and capacity signalling rather than an earnings event. Worth watching are whether a formal agreement follows, the tenor and volume of any contracted capacity, and whether the project ties into grid-connection queues that have been the binding constraint in Iberian data centre development.