NextEra Energy is seeking to acquire Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at about $67 billion, creating a massive power company as the energy needs of artificial intelligence drive demand higher in the U.S.
It is one of the biggest proposed mergers so far this year and would create the world’s biggest regulated electric utility business by market capitalization, the companies said on Monday.
The combined company will serve approximately 10 million utility customer accounts across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Dominion, based in Richmond, Virginia, helps to power hundreds of data centers across the state. It also provides regulated electricity service to 3.6 million homes and businesses in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and regulated natural gas service to 500,000 customers in South Carolina.
Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra owns Florida Power & Light Company, which provides electricity to about 12 million people across the state. In December NextEra and Google Cloud announced that they were expanding their existing partnership to build new data center campuses across the U.S.
The potential tie-up of the two companies comes at a time when consumers worried about escalating electric bills are pushing back against AI data centers. Some governors, attorneys general and others protesting rising electricity bills say cash-strapped residents are stuck in a broken system.
Officials and lawmakers in at least six states — including Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — are going to new lengths to try to block rate increases proposed by utilities. Some are pressing utilities to completely change their model for financing major system upgrades.
Dominion shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 0.8138 shares of NextEra Energy for each share of Dominion that they own. Dominion stockholders will continue to receive Dominion’s current quarterly dividend through closing, plus a one-time cash payment of $360 million at closing.
NextEra's stockholders will own 74.5% of the combined business, while Dominion's stockholders will own 25.5%.
NextEra CEO John Ketchum will serve as chairman and CEO of the combined company..
"We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever— not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies. It enables us to buy, build, finance and operate more efficiently, which translates into more affordable electricity for our customers in the long run," Ketchum said in a statement.
The combined company will have dual headquarters in Juno Beach, Florida, and Richmond, Virginia. It will also keep Dominion Energy South Carolina’s existing operational headquarters in Cayce, South Carolina.
The business will use NextEra’s name and trade under its “NEE” ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange. Its board of directors will include 10 directors from NextEra and four from Dominion.
The deal, which was approved by both companies' boards, is expected to close in 12 to 18 months. It still needs approval from NextEra and Dominion shareholders, as well as various regulatory approvals, including approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Shares of Dominion jumped more 9.61% in morning trading, while NextEra's stock fell 5%.
FILE - The Dominion Energy sign outside of the Electric and Fleet Operations center in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Aiken, S.C. (AP Photo/Artie Walker Jr., File)
FILE - A Dominion Energy lineman lifts himself up to work on a power line in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in North Augusta, S.C. (AP Photo/Artie Walker Jr., File)
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — A new and deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda is the latest health emergency forcing African governments to break free of dependency on global donors like the United States as international support has been slashed in half over the past five years.
Shrinking assistance worsened by the Trump administration's sweeping cuts is colliding with Africa's fast-growing population of over 1.5 billion people. The Ebola outbreak of a strain with no approved therapeutics or vaccines comes days after a rare hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship put officials on the continent on alert.
Africa faces “an equally dangerous threat” of funding, Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said while launching an initiative for African self-reliance in health financing earlier this year.
“Every time we have an outbreak, many countries start to ask for partners because they don’t have in their budgets funding to respond, even to prepare for these outbreaks,” he added during a briefing on the new Ebola outbreak.
But African nations know that must change.
The Africa CDC says the continent now faces “an unprecedented financing crisis.”
It says official development assistance has dropped sharply, from about $26 billion in 2021 to around $13 billion in 2025, as wealthy nations turn attention instead to wider geopolitical issues like the Iran war and domestic pressures.
African leaders for years had pledged to better finance their own health systems, but commitments remained on paper. In 2001, countries committed to allocating at least 15% of national budgets to health, yet only Rwanda, Botswana and Cape Verde are on track out of Africa's 54 nations.
“The conversation was somehow theoretical because the donor system was still functioning,” said Dr. Alex Ajangba, a health financing expert and co-editor of the new African Journal of Health Economics, Systems and Policy. “But now that cushion is gone."
He added: "What we are seeing here is not a temporary dip of donor funding that we will recover from.”
Governments are accelerating efforts toward “health sovereignty,” with aspirations to finance and manage systems with far less reliance on external aid.
Initiatives like Ghana’s “Accra Reset” launched in September, and the Africa Health Security and Sovereignty Agenda, adopted by African leaders in February, aim to strengthen long-term resilience.
Health ministers are proposing domestic solutions, including higher taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary foods, pooled procurement of medicines to lower costs, expanding local pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing and tackling inefficiencies.
The need is stark. Africa imports more than 90% of its health commodities such as vaccines and medicines, while health emergencies — from mpox to cholera to Ebola — surged from 153 outbreaks to 242 between 2022 and 2024, according to the Africa CDC. It wants the continent to produce 60% of its vaccines by 2040.
“The word ‘health sovereignty’ has become a phrase that is used in almost every continental policy meeting right now,” Ajangba said, warning it risks being just a “slogan.”
Experts say the continent has plenty of wealth. Africa holds about 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, including those essential to technology and renewable energy, yet much of that value is lost through opaque or weak contracts, illicit financial flows, debt burdens and limited local processing of minerals that are largely exported raw, Ajangba said.
The continent loses about $40 billion annually to illicit financial flows in an extractive sector that includes mining, gas and oil, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
Aside from tackling those issues, another key pillar of African nations' transition away from aid dependency is co-financing, requiring countries to contribute more alongside donors.
Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, says lower-income countries contributed a record $302 million toward vaccines in 2025, and about $1 billion over the past five years.
“This creates predictability,” Gavi chief executive Sania Nishtar told The Associated Press. “Reliance on aid for basic services does not.”
But the shift can be contentious. The Trump administration has pushed co-financing as a key condition of the “America First” health deals it has agreed with nearly two dozen African nations. They reinvent aid to Africa by requiring countries to increase domestic spending within a specified time or risk losing support.
Some countries have rejected the proposed deals, outraged over U.S. requests for sharing of health data with no promises that nations will receive any benefit from it. Others criticize proposed swaps of health support for natural resources.
Though most governments say Africa needs to move toward self-sufficiency, critics say some of the U.S. conditions place unrealistic pressure on already strained economies.
“They are being set up to fail,” said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, an international advocacy group. “When an administration says, ‘If you don’t hit these numbers, you’re not going to get resources anymore,’ that is extremely serious.”
Many African countries are under mounting debt burdens. Already, about 40% are spending more on debt than health.
“Many of these countries have huge debt service and other challenges,” said Jen Kates, a senior vice president at the nonprofit KFF, which focuses on health policy. “At the end of the day, it’s going to be people who live in those countries who will feel the effects.”
Africa’s debt has surged to about $1.2 trillion, according to the African Export-Import Bank, forcing brutal trade-offs. Debt servicing consumes roughly 19% of government revenue in sub-Saharan African countries, according to the United Nations.
For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
FILE - Health workers wearing protective suits tend to an Ebola victim kept in an isolation tent in Beni, Congo, July 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
A girl sanitises her hands in front of Kibuli Muslim Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, Saturday, May 16, 2026. (AP Photo/ Hajarah Nalwadda)
Ambulances are parked outside a hospital in Bunia, Congo, Saturday, May 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Constant Same Bagalwa)
FILE - Health workers dressed in protective gear begin their shift at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, Congo, July 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
