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AI Power Play: Bloom Energy Rockets Into the S&P 500, Bumping The Trade Desk Off Wall Street's A-List
Fuel-cell maker Bloom Energy is joining the S&P 500 after a 191% year-to-date surge fueled by the AI data-center power boom, while ad-tech firm The Trade Desk gets demoted to the small-cap index.
Bloom Energy is headed for the big leagues. S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Friday that the fuel-cell maker will join the S&P 500 effective before market open on September 21, alongside genomics firm Illumina and storage company Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) — part of the index's quarterly rebalance.
The stock jumped roughly 6% in after-hours trading on the news, on top of an 8.4% intraday gain Friday as traders bet on the inclusion ahead of the official announcement. Bloom Energy shares are now up approximately 191% year-to-date, one of the steepest runs of any large-cap stock in 2026, as data centers racing to power AI workloads turn to on-site fuel cells to fill gaps in the strained U.S. electrical grid.
Riding the AI Power Crunch
The rally has been underpinned by real numbers: Bloom's most recent quarter showed revenue of $1.07 billion, up 165.5% year-over-year, alongside earnings per share of $0.78 — roughly double what Wall Street had penciled in. The company's fuel-cell servers, which generate electricity on-site without needing a grid connection, have become a go-to option for hyperscalers and data-center developers trying to bring new capacity online faster than utilities can build it.
To make room for the three additions, S&P is bumping Molson Coors, The Trade Desk and Builders FirstSource down to the S&P SmallCap 600. The Trade Desk's demotion is the most notable of the three: the ad-tech company was a Wall Street darling for years before a rocky stretch this year dented its market value below the threshold S&P uses for index inclusion.
"THE CHANGES ENSURE THAT EACH INDEX IS MORE REPRESENTATIVE OF ITS MARKET CAPITALIZATION RANGE," S&P DOW JONES INDICES SAID IN ITS ANNOUNCEMENT.
What's Next
Index funds that track the S&P 500 will need to buy shares of all three new additions ahead of the September 21 effective date, a mechanical wave of buying that has historically given newly added stocks a further short-term lift. For Bloom Energy, the inclusion cements its transformation from a niche clean-energy bet into one of the more prominent names in the AI infrastructure trade — though, as with any stock up nearly 200% in a year, the size of the run has left some analysts wary of how much further it can climb.