Everyone's buying AI chips. This boring grid contractor is now posting 700+ new jobs a month to build the power for them.

I've been trying to find AI plays that aren't the same five chip names everyone already owns, and Quanta Services (PWR) keeps coming up. They don't make chips or models. They build the actual electrical infrastructure, the substations, transmission lines, and grid connections that data centers need to turn on.

The thing that got my attention is the hiring. I saw on altindex that their monthly job postings sat around 80 to 100 for most of last year. This year it climbed to 170 by May, then jumped past 730 in June and it's still running hot into July. That's roughly a 6x move, and companies don't staff up like that unless the order book is real.

It lines up with the headlines too. There's a steady drumbeat right now about power being the real bottleneck for AI buildout rather than chips, and Quanta sits on the other side of that trade. The financials back it up. Revenue went from about $6.2B a quarter a year ago to $7.9B last quarter, with earnings beating estimates each print.

The catch, and it's a real one, is that the stock already moved. PWR is up about 76% over the past year and trades around 95x earnings, so a good chunk of this is priced in. It also pulled back a few percent this week, and a couple of insiders sold back in May in the $760s.

So it's not cheap and it's not a secret anymore. But the hiring curve says demand is still accelerating, not leveling off.

Is the grid buildout still an early trade here, or did I already miss it at these levels?