The company that Thomas Edison helped found in 1892 to illuminate the world is now staking its future on powering the artificial intelligence age.

GE Vernova, which became an independent publicly traded company in April 2024 following General Electric's three-way breakup — one of the most consequential corporate dissolutions in American business history, ending an era when sprawling industrial conglomerates dominated — has seen its stock climb more than 600% since the spinoff. Behind those gains is a deliberate strategy orchestrated by CEO Scott Strazik, who has pivoted the business toward emerging growth areas — in part by transforming new customers such as NVIDIA and nuclear-energy startup Blue Energy into research and development partners. The pivot comes as hyperscale data centers built to train and run AI models are projected to consume a rapidly growing share of global electricity, intensifying demand for new generation capacity and grid infrastructure.

"For us, our true north is to electrify the world. And if we electrify the world, we will decarbonize the world," Strazik said in a recent interview.

GE Vernova's equipment and technology are used to generate approximately 25% of the world's electricity across gas, wind, steam, hydro, and nuclear energy. The company also manufactures equipment and develops software for power grids. It ranks No. 124 on the Fortune 500, while its former GE siblings — GE Aerospace at No. 101 and GE Healthcare at No. 217 — operate as separate entities following the three-way split.

Strazik emphasized that the demands of AI infrastructure clients are pushing the company's engineering capabilities beyond conventional offerings. "The technical hurdle with how they want to run AI factories is much more complex than our standard-fare offering, and that's great," he said. "What I see happening is a lot of the technology we're developing to help them … will ultimately apply to the broader grid over time. But they will have funded a lot of the learning curve."

The partnership with Blue Energy reflects a broader industry trend: major technology companies have increasingly signaled interest in nuclear power — including next-generation small modular reactors — as a carbon-free option to meet the enormous energy demands of AI data centers, which can require as much electricity as a small city.

The CEO also pointed to a significant demographic shift within the organization since the spinoff. "25% of our employees today weren't part of the company the day we spun. They don't even know GE," Strazik noted. A comparable transformation is visible on the customer side: 25% of the company's customers began purchasing from GE Vernova only after it became independent. "Technology companies that historically were not buying directly from us have become critical customers and strategic partners," he added.

Beyond technology, Strazik highlighted workforce development as a priority. "We need kids that get excited about building stuff, because we need to build a lot of stuff in the next decade."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.