Bloom Grew Revenue 138% Last Quarter; GE Vernova Booked $29.3B in Orders

Bloom Energy grew third-quarter revenue 138.1% year over year to $1.24 billion, while GE Vernova booked $29.3 billion in orders, up 96% organically. Both companies reported in late October, and both are selling the same thing to different buyers: electricity for AI builders who cannot wait for the grid. The identical demand wave is now testing two distinct delivery models at once.

Bloom ships modular solid oxide fuel cells — Energy Servers — that sit on the customer's property, in deployments ranging from 150 kilowatts to near-gigawatt sites. GE Vernova sells heavy-duty gas turbines, aeroderivative units, substations and transformers at utility scale. One routes around the grid; the other rebuilds it.

How fast can each model ship?

Speed is Bloom's product. Product sales made up 87% of its quarterly revenue, and nearly all of that growth depends on Energy Servers leaving the factory on time. Product gross margin rose to 38.4%, and CFO Simon Edwards credited strong pricing for the gain — customers, in effect, are paying a premium for delivery speed.

CEO KR Sridhar put it bluntly: "We will not be the bottleneck." Bloom delivered power to a Utah site for Oracle in less than two months. That is the pitch in one sentence: generation measured in weeks, not interconnection queues.

GE Vernova's quarter looked different in shape but larger in scale. The company booked 55 heavy-duty gas units and 57 aeroderivative turbines, for a book-to-bill ratio above 2x — years of visible work. Data centers accounted for roughly 20% of gas customers. Power EBITDA margin hit 21.4% in what CEO Scott Strazik called "historically our weakest margin quarter." The backlog, in other words, is doing the heavy lifting.

The cash signals diverge sharply. Bloom used $181 million of free cash flow in the quarter. GE Vernova generated $5.41 billion. One company is scaling on promise; the other is already printing money.

Which company is fixing the grid, and which is bypassing it?

Sridhar argues the grid "is overwhelmed by the concentrated and huge power needs of data centers." His fix puts generation next to the load, and he also wants utilities to rate-base Energy Servers — a structural change that would turn fuel cells into regulated assets.

That idea has at least one convert. American Electric Power plans to supply Google, a unit of Alphabet, with 700 megawatts of Bloom systems built for carbon capture. A utility buying fuel cells on behalf of a hyperscaler is not a roadmap item; it is a signed plan.

Strazik is spending on the grid itself. GE Vernova agreed to buy Trench Group for $9 billion, adding bushings and instrument transformers, with the transaction expected to close in late 2027. He also drew the line between the two models: "Electrification in isolation... is not going to replace the need for more power generation." Read that as a concession that onsite fuel cells and central plants will coexist.

What happens next for each stock?

The market has already voted, and not kindly. Bloom fell among the S&P 500's biggest losers amid fears of data-center delays, down 40.53% over the past month. GE Vernova dropped 22.32%, also slipping after a Democratic sweep in the elections.

Bloom's management said a small number of year-end deliveries will decide where revenue lands within its $4.40 billion to $4.60 billion guidance range. The open question is whether contract assets turn into cash. For GE Vernova, the marker to watch is whether the backlog passes $200 billion in the fourth quarter.

Which model has more staying power into 2027?

GE Vernova owns the larger, more cash-generative business today. It sells generation, grid hardware and long-term service contracts, and its cash flow funds both acquisitions and buybacks. Wind remains a drag, with $400 million to $500 million in expected 2026 EBITDA losses, though management has already disclosed that cost.

Bloom's case rests on onsite power becoming the default for AI campuses. Its speed is genuinely impressive; its cash conversion is not yet. Positive operating cash flow in the fourth quarter, plus another signed utility order in the mold of the AEP-Google deal, would strengthen the argument considerably. Until then, the fastest shipper in the room is also the one burning the most cash to prove it.