July was defined by energy. In a historic high, Microsoft and OpenAI announced a multi-billion dollar investment in modular nuclear reactors to power their next-gen data centers. The low point was a series of localized grid failures blamed on the massive power draw of AI clusters during a heatwave. This month proved that the biggest bottleneck for AI isn’t data or code anymore—it’s electricity. Sustainability is now the primary metric for the big players’ success.