Big tech is going to have to fund the plants and probably transmission. Because the energy utilities have a decades long planning horizon for investments.
Good discussion about this in recent Odd Lots podcast.
I've read a bunch of the opposite: a lot of secret deals between tech companies and utilities, where when details come out, we find that regular ratepayers are going to be paying a decent chunk of the cost.
Good discussion? This is a Bloomberg podcast with ads from Palantir explicitly telling us AI is not here to replace any of us. They do everything they can to avoid the topic of what the cost is to regular people.
Data centers are built in people's backyards without their permission, wreck the values of their home, and then utility companies jack up their price to compensate for the extra strain on the grid. So the residents have to pay for Big Tech but get no share of the profits. How this podcast does a whole episode on data centers and the electricity grid and doesn't talk about what's actually happening to people, well, that would be surprising if I didn't know where it came from.
Good discussion about this in recent Odd Lots podcast.