GE Vernova in the AI stack

The business and what the filings show

GE Vernova makes gas turbines, grid equipment and wind turbines. It is the largest equipment maker in the power layer by revenue: $44.0B over its latest four quarters, +17%, at a 6% operating margin. Its operating cash flow of $19.2B was well above its operating income, helped by customer deposits that arrive long before the equipment ships.

Those deposits come from a backlog that has grown quickly. GE Vernova reports remaining performance obligations of $197B. Its 10-K says that of the equipment backlog at the end of 2025, about 37% was expected to turn into revenue within a year, 69% within two and 97% within five, while long-term service agreements on its installed turbines run for about ten years on average.

The company is one of the most direct ways the AI build-out reaches the power sector. Its 10-K points to rising electricity demand from hyperscalers and data centers as a driver of gas-turbine orders and says data centers are among the industries driving growth in grid orders. It also warns that its share price is often linked to AI investment trends and sector sentiment, which is a candid statement of where the risk lies.

How AI shows up in the numbers

AI shows up at GE Vernova as orders for gas turbines and grid equipment needed to power new data centers, often years before those data centers open. That makes its backlog a long-range forecast of the build-out: equipment ordered today is a bet on capacity that comes online later this decade. Its 10-K also notes new kinds of customers, including hyperscalers, contracting directly for power equipment.

For scale, GE Vernova’s revenue over the latest four quarters equals 8% of the $566B the five largest buyers spent on capital projects over their latest four quarters. Their capex rose +81% on the year before, while GE Vernova’s revenue grew +17%: slower than the spending, so it is capturing a smaller share of each new capex dollar, or more of its business sits outside the build-out.

How it talks about AI

GE Vernova is not yet in the set of companies whose earnings releases we read sentence by sentence, so this section quotes its annual report on Form 10-K instead. Statements in a 10-K carry more weight than a press release or an earnings call: they are part of a filing the company signs and can be held to, and the risk factors in particular say what management believes could go wrong. The sentences below are quoted from its latest 10-K.

Read them for two things: how directly the company ties its growth to AI, and how much it is willing to quantify. A company that names AI as its main growth driver is making a claim its revenue mix can be checked against in the next filing; one that says AI’s effect is hard to measure is telling you its numbers won’t isolate it.

The figure to set these statements against is GE Vernova’s own growth: revenue +17% over its latest four quarters at a 22% gross margin. If AI is driving the business as described, the next filings should show it in the mix of revenue by product or customer, and in margins that hold up as volumes grow.

• On grid demand: “We also continue to benefit from higher growth in orders from other transmission activities to connect new power sources, to electrify industries including data centers playing a key role in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), and to modernize existing grid infrastructure.” 10-K, January 29, 2026
• On gas power: “We believe that gas power plays an essential role in the energy transition, serving as a fundamental source of reliable and dispatchable power to support industrialization, grid stability needs, and rising electricity demand from hyperscalers and data centers.” 10-K, January 29, 2026
• On its risks: “Because we manufacture and sell products used in AI infrastructure, our performance and the market price of our common stock are frequently linked to AI investment trends and sector sentiment, which has resulted in, and may continue to result in, significant volatility.” 10-K, January 29, 2026

The trend in the numbers

Since the start of 2023, GE Vernova’s largest quarter by revenue was Q3 2026 at $12.6B, and its highest gross margin was 25% in Q3 2026. The latest quarter set the revenue record for the period.

Quarter by quarter, GE Vernova’s revenue grew +4% in Q4 2025, +16% in Q1 2026, +22% in Q2 2026, +27% in Q3 2026 on the same quarter a year earlier. Growth has been accelerating.

Gross margin in the latest quarter was 25%, against 19% a year earlier, so it is keeping more of each dollar as it grows. Operating margin moved from 4% to 11% over the same span. Over the latest four quarters it turned 44% of its revenue into operating cash flow and spent 5% of revenue on capital projects, against 3% a year earlier.

Where it sits in the stack

GE Vernova sits in the power, cooling and data centers layer of the AI stack. It is paid by the AI clouds layer.

Among the 16 companies in this layer on our map, it ranks first by revenue and number 11 of 16 by revenue growth. Its gross margin of 22% compares with 27% for the layer as a whole, so it keeps less of each dollar than the layer average. The full layer analysis is on the power & DCs page.

Latest four quarters for 10-Q filers; latest fiscal year for 20-F filers. Companies under $100 million of revenue are left out.

Against the 16 US-listed companies in its layer, GE Vernova grew +17% over the latest year versus +24% for the layer combined, and converted 39% of revenue into free cash flow versus 12% for the layer. It is growing more slowly than its layer, so its share of the layer’s revenue is shrinking.

What has to go right, and what could go wrong

What has to go right. Data-center power demand has to stay strong through the years it takes to deliver the turbines ordered now, and GE Vernova has to deliver that backlog on time at the margins it was priced at.

What could go wrong. Equipment ordered today is a bet on data centers that open years from now; if the build-out slows, orders could slow before revenue does. Execution on large projects has been a weak point for the industry before.

These describe the conditions the business depends on, as the filings show them. They are not a view on the stock.

Through the lens of Investing in AI

Rob May’s book offers six mental models for telling AI moats from traps. The one most useful for GE Vernova’s layer is “AI changes markets and corporate strategy”: When creation gets cheap, choke points move. Like the internet shifting newspaper profits to discovery, AI pushes moats toward coordination and control points. The winners sit at the new choke point, not the best AI story.

The question it asks of any company is: What becomes scarce in this value chain as AI makes the work abundant? Applied to GE Vernova, the filings on this page are the place to start: the margin trend shows whether it holds scarce value or passes it through, the customer and financing disclosures show who it depends on, and the commitments show what it has promised before the revenue arrives.

Customers and concentration

US companies must disclose any customer that accounts for 10% or more of revenue, and foreign filers usually describe their largest customers. Concentration matters because a company’s growth is only as durable as the handful of buyers behind it, and in the AI stack those buyers are often the same few companies.

• We have not found a customer-concentration statement in GE Vernova’s latest filings that our reader can quote cleanly; see its filings on SEC EDGAR.

Commitments and backlog

• Backlog. GE Vernova reports $197B of remaining performance obligations, 4.5 times its revenue over the latest four quarters: contracted revenue not yet earned.
• Equipment backlog timing. “We expect to recognize revenue as we satisfy our remaining performance obligations as follows: (1) Equipment-related RPO of $64,245 million of which 37%, 69%, and 97% is expected to be recognized within 1, 2, and 5 years, respectively, and the remaining thereafter.” 10-K

What to watch

GE Vernova’s next quarterly report will cover the quarter ending around December 30, 2026. Large companies must file a 10-Q within 40 days of a quarter’s end and a 10-K within 60 days of the fiscal year’s end, so the new figures should arrive by about February 28, 2027 at the latest. This page, the layer pages and the next quarterly report all update from that filing.

• Orders and backlog growth each quarter, the forward read on power demand from data centers.
• Operating margin as backlog converts: much of it was priced before demand surged, newer orders after.
• Production capacity for gas turbines, which limits how fast the backlog can turn into revenue.
• Its place in the next quarterly AI Stack Report, which updates every company on the map from the new filings.

Figures from GE Vernova’s SEC filings, latest period ended September 30, 2026. Other companies: all company pages.