The AI boom is pushing companies across the economy — from tech giants to automakers — deep into the energy business, Axios national energy correspondent Amy Harder writes.

• Why it matters: The scramble for electricity has become the gold rush beneath the AI boom, creating enormous value and enormous risk if demand falls short.

Electricity — long treated as a cheap, abundant commodity — is suddenly emerging as one of the most valuable strategic assets in business.

• "Everyone to some extent is either dependent on energy as a core input or they see energy as a huge opportunity," said Brian Janous, who was Microsoft's first energy hire 15 years ago and is now co-founder of data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure.

The latest: Ford this month began its expansion into energy storage for data centers and other large power users.

• It launched a new subsidiary called Ford Energy in response to what it calls "the massive demand for domestic energy storage."

Follow the money: Investors are rewarding companies pivoting to — or doubling down on — the power behind the AI boom:

• Ford's stock price rose to its highest level in three years after it announced its $2 billion energy business.
• Bloom Energy, long seen as a niche energy player whose tech can deliver on-site power fast, saw its stock price skyrocket more than 1,200% over the past year.
• Fervo Energy, a geothermal startup once viewed as speculative climate tech, surged after going public earlier this month as Wall Street hunts for new electricity sources to feed data centers.
• GE Vernova booked $2.4 billion in electrical equipment orders for data centers in the first quarter alone, more than it booked all of last year. Its stock is up about 60% this year.

Reality check: Beneath the surging stock prices, trouble is mounting. Opposition to data centers is intensifying, and some of the biggest projects may never come to fruition.

• "A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in this space," Janous said — not because of a lack of demand, but because so many mega projects are chasing that demand.

The bottom line: For decades, energy was an input. In the AI era, it's becoming the product.

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Axios' Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid take us inside Friday's Situation Room meeting on the Iran deal:

President Trump asked for several amendments to the deal his envoys reached with their Iranian counterparts during a Situation Room meeting on Friday, according to a senior administration official and a second source briefed on the issue.

• Trump wants the deal and expects to finalize it soon, but is keen to strengthen several points that are important to him — particularly around Iran's nuclear material, two U.S. officials said.

Why it matters: Trump's request has launched another round of back-and-forth that could last several days.

👀 The intrigue: Trump announced Friday that he'd be convening the Situation Room meeting and seemed to suggest he was leaning toward accepting the deal.

• A senior administration official tells Axios: "There will be a deal. The imminence of it, we'll see. We're willing to wait so the president gets what he asks for. It could be a week. It could be less. It could be more. At the turn of the week, we hope to have something."

Trump asked his team to make changes to the draft regarding Iran's nuclear program, according to the two sources.

• In its current form, the memorandum of understanding includes a commitment from Iran not to pursue a nuclear weapon, but no specific concessions beyond that.

Iranian state media has reported that a deal is close but not final, and claimed Iran would receive billions in frozen funds. The White House denies that.

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Here are two of President Trump's Truth Social posts from this weekend.

• Why it matters: We have every reason to believe these are his direct, unfiltered words. So nothing better captures his mind.

12:35 a.m. ET today:

• After Trump visited Walter Reed last week, the White House released a three-page doctor's letter saying the president, who turns 80 in two weeks, "remains in excellent health" at 238 pounds: "Preventive counseling was provided, including guidance on diet, recommendation to take a low-dose aspirin, increased physical activity, and continued weight loss."

7:03 p.m. ET yesterday:

• Freedom 250 (the Trump-created group, which is separate from the congressionally established America250) announced yesterday that after the spate of cancellations by musical acts, "As the visionary behind the Great American State Fair, we are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24 in an opening ceremony celebrating America's 250th birthday."

Axios' Russell Contreras narrates how significant shifts in the Texas electorate could throw a curveball into this year's marquee Senate race:

A population surge in Texas is reshaping the electorate and injecting new uncertainty into the Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico.

• Why it matters: New arrivals — along with booming exurban counties and fading Latino support for President Trump — scramble the political math in typically red Texas.

Texas added nearly 400,000 residents in 2025, the most of any state, bringing its population to 31.7 million, according to an Axios review of U.S. Census data analyzed by Mendoza Law Firm.

• Since 2020, Texas has seen about 2.6 million new residents, also more than any other state. That five-year gain is larger than New Mexico's entire population.

Between the lines: What makes 2026 structurally different from prior cycles is the sheer scale of demographic change.

• Five of the nation's top 10 fastest-growing cities since 2020 are in Texas.

What to watch: The big unknown is which party the new arrivals favor.

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Graham Platner, insurgent Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Maine, was caught by his wife "sexting" with up to six women before he announced his campaign last year, according to leaks from a former campaign staffer to the N.Y. Times and Wall Street Journal.

• Platner, 41 — an oyster farmer and Marine and Army veteran — is challenging five-term Sen. Susan Collins (R), 73.

Amy Gertner, Platner's wife, had warned the campaign staffer, who later quit, that she had discovered the texts on her husband's phone.

• The staffer had asked Gertner during an internal vetting process if there was information she wanted to share.

Gertner said in a statement provided to Axios: "I confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend. … I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind — and I am deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy."

• "It is no secret that Graham and I have struggled on our fertility journey," she added. "We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. … Our marriage today is stronger than ever before. I know who Graham is. I know the man I married and the husband he has been to me on the best and the worst days of my life. That hasn't changed, and it won't."

Platner allies demonized the leak. Morris Katz, Platner's strategist, tweeted: "It's no one's f-cking business what happened in Graham & Amy's marriage before he was ever a candidate for office. There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency."

• Video message from Platner's wife ... Read the WSJ story (gift link).

As exurban cities near booming metro areas explode in growth, hundreds of U.S. communities are losing residents at a pace signaling deep structural decline, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• They concentrate poverty and tend to have aging infrastructure and limited job growth.
• They struggle to attract doctors and teachers and have few of the amenities drawing younger Americans to boomtowns like Celina, Texas, or Apex, N.C.

🔬 Zoom in: An Axios analysis of census estimates found more than 600 incorporated places of 20,000 or more lost population between April 2020 and July 2025.

• Many of the fastest-declining cities are majority-Black communities in the Deep South, working-class Mexican American and Native American cities in the Southwest, or legacy industrial towns in the Midwest.

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Workers yesterday continued building the cage for the June 14 UFC Freedom 250 fight on the South Lawn, as seen from the Washington Monument.

The NBA Finals will match the San Antonio Spurs vs. the New York Knicks — a 1999 rematch.

• The series, which begins Wednesday in San Antonio, promises to be nirvana for basketball fans.
• 🎰 The Spurs are favored.

Last night, in a battle of heavyweights, the Spurs beat the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.

• The Finals pit the Knicks — one of the league's flagship franchises, riding a 53-year championship drought — against the upstart Spurs, who have ascended to the NBA's elite sooner than expected behind 22-year-old, 7-foot-4 French superstar Victor Wembanyama.

Tim Ream, who at 38 is on the verge of becoming the oldest U.S. player to appear in a World Cup, was named by coach Mauricio Pochettino yesterday as USA captain heading into the World Cup, which begins 11 days from now.

• Ream is a center back who plays for Charlotte FC and is from St. Louis.

Read the announcement.