AI Boom Has Generac Looking to Data Centers for Growth

Generac Holdings Inc. made its name providing backup generators to homes whipsawed by hurricanes and ice storms. Now, it’s chasing a new market: data centers.

The company is investing about $130 million in equipment and a factory to build larger backup generators for massive computing facilities running artificial intelligence applications, said Chief Executive Officer Aaron Jagdfeld. The company recently made some of its first international shipments of its bigger generators to data center customers, he said.

“We’ve got a very robust pipeline of activity,” Jagdfeld said during an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York.