Energy runs AI mostly for maintenance, inspection and forecasting; agents are arriving, measured returns are rare, and regulators now ask utilities to disclose their AI.

New York ordered utilities to list their AI, Duke put agents on grid studies, and TotalEnergies and YPF expanded AI in exploration and refining.

OpenAI shipped a public case-law index and the legal incumbents plugged in; the same week showed which data is still a moat.

Anthropic's call to slow the frontier drew a Senate rejection, a lawsuit and an invitation, while OpenAI sought $1.5 trillion and moved into legal work.

Since July, AI agents moved inside control systems operators already run, Iberdrola claimed nearly 500, and the EU pushed its compliance deadline to 2027.

Since June, the largest US grid fell short of what it needs for a third year, federal regulators intervened, and Virginia taxed data-centre power.

Google's brain drain, Anthropic's distillation complaint, and a compute land-grab showed AI's scarce assets are now talent and physical plant rather than the model.

AI data centers are reshaping power from the demand side, pushing US capacity prices to records and making firm electricity an operator's most valuable asset.

Markets stopped rewarding AI layoffs, Google triggered a model price war, Washington shelved AI oversight, and Europe's energy costs priced it out of the buildout.