PJM Interconnection’s 2028/2029 capacity auction cleared at the FERC-approved cap of $325 per MW-day on July 14, 2026 and still procured 6,831 megawatts less than its reliability requirement, an explicit signal that firm dispatchable power is now scarce inside the grid region running through the U.S. data-center alley
On July 14, 2026, PJM Interconnection ran its Base Residual Auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year. According to PJM’s own commentary released the same day, prices cleared at the FERC-approved price cap of $325 per megawatt-day. Even at cap, the market procured approximately 6,831 megawatts less than the reliability requirement for the capacity zone. PJM cited the continued addition of large data-center loads to its demand forecast as a driver of the shortfall.
That is not a normal auction outcome. When a capacity market clears at the price ceiling and still walks away short, the constraint has moved from financial to physical. PJM’s 13-state footprint runs from Virginia through the Mid-Atlantic and into the Ohio Valley, the same geography now hosting the fastest-growing concentration of hyperscale AI compute in the world. Per the Electric Choice March 2026 tally, Virginia alone hosts 665 data centers, more than any other U.S. state.
The rest of the conventional supply stack is not positioned to close the gap in time. Interconnect queues at PJM, ERCOT, and CAISO now extend multiple years. Per the World Nuclear Association’s tracker, no commercial small modular reactor is yet operating in North America or Europe as of early 2026. Natural gas turbine manufacturers are booked into the back half of the decade. Utility-scale renewable projects, even when their power purchase agreements clear, still have to move through the same queue.
Translation: after this auction, buyers of firm dispatchable megawatts inside PJM face two options, pay the cap and take whatever clears, or bypass the queue by building generation on the customer’s side of the meter. This is a supply-shock market event, not a policy incentive. It rewires the near-term economics of AI power procurement in favor of platforms that can be co-located with data-center load without waiting for grid interconnection.
GH Power, the Canadian critical minerals and clean energy technology company that in July 2026 entered a definitive Business Combination Agreement to become a NYSE American-listed public company through a combination with Matinas BioPharma Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: MTNB), has been openly building for exactly this environment.
The transaction is anchored to a US$250 million pre-money valuation for GH Power and is targeted to close in Q4 2026, subject to Matinas stockholder approval, Ontario court approvals, F-4 effectiveness, completion of at least US$15 million in PIPE financing, and NYSE American listing approval.
GH Power’s technology, described in the July 2026 joint press release and on the company’s own website, uses recycled or primary aluminum and water in a controlled chemical reaction that produces three physical outputs from a single system: fuel-cell-grade hydrogen, high-purity aluminum oxide, and thermal energy. The reaction is chemical rather than fissile. It requires no U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing and no High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium fuel. The design is modular, meaning the platform can be built adjacent to a customer load, a data-center campus, a combined-cycle facility, an industrial site, rather than requiring the customer to come to the grid. GH Power’s own corporate boilerplate frames the company as “supporting industrial decarbonization and behind-the-meter energy solutions.” That is the profile of a purpose-built behind-the-meter energy platform, not a nuclear licensing program in a different jacket.
The Virginia positioning is not new. In April 2024, GH Power was named a technology partner in the Dominion Energy Innovation Center’s Metal Fuels Alliance, a U.S. Department of Energy MAKE-IT Prize-winning strategy targeting aluminum recycling and green alumina manufacturing along Virginia’s I-64 Innovation Corridor. In its own public remarks on the award, GH Power CEO and founder Dave White described the recognition as validation of the company’s work “converting end-of-life metals into green energy carriers to support decarbonizing heavy industry and powering a sustainable future.” In the same announcement, GH Power stated its intent to scale its technology “in a meaningful way in the Commonwealth of Virginia.” Later in 2024, GH Power was selected into the Dominion Energy Innovation Center’s Accelerator Program on the utility-deployment track. Both selections predate PJM’s July 14 auction; both point at the same state that now sits at the epicenter of the shortfall.
The independent validation stack is substantive. GH Power’s technology was developed in partnership with the Energy and Particle Technology Laboratory at Carleton University, alongside collaboration with the National Research Council of Canada and CanmetENERGY. The company is a member of the U.S. Hydrogen Alliance and has been the subject of international coverage, including in Wirtschafts Woche, on its European expansion work.
For category context, several public-market names have already been repriced against variants of this thesis. NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) and Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) represent the small modular reactor version, long-dated, licensing-heavy, and capital-intensive. Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) represents the fuel-cell behind-the-meter version, with publicly disclosed data-center customer deployments. Talen Energy (Nasdaq: TLN) and Constellation Energy (Nasdaq: CEG) represent the nuclear-to-data-center PPA version, following the Talen / Amazon Web Services Susquehanna precedent and the Constellation / Microsoft Three Mile Island Unit 1 restart. GH Power is a fifth model, chemical process, no fissile fuel, modular, three-product output, assembled on a much smaller base. It remains a pre-close micro-cap where transaction, execution, and commercialization risks are real, and public disclosures about future Virginia deployment reflect stated intent rather than binding commercial commitments.
What to watch from here: completion of a $15 million pre-business combination financing and the required Matinas stockholder vote to approve the business combination; effectiveness of the Form F-4 registration statement to be filed with the SEC; closing of the Business Combination and NYSE American listing (targeted Q4 2026); commercialization milestones; any next-stage announcements regarding the Dominion Energy Innovation Center Metal Fuels Alliance or the Virginia scale-up GH Power has stated it intends to pursue; and customer, engineering, or commercial disclosures made in connection with the Form F-4.
PJM just drew a hard line between AI power that has to wait in the interconnect queue and AI power that gets built adjacent to the load. GH Power has been publicly building on the second side of that line.
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Important information about the proposed business combination and where to find it
This communication is being made in connection with the proposed business combination involving GH Power, Matinas, and the newly formed Ontario parent company expected to be named GH Power International, as well as related shareholder and stockholder approvals. In connection with the proposed business combination and related approvals, Matinas, GH Power, and GHP International expect to file a registration statement on Form F-4 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The registration statement will contain a preliminary proxy statement for Matinas stockholders that will also constitute a preliminary prospectus of GHP International. As of the date of this communication, the Form F-4 has not been filed, and no definitive proxy statement/prospectus is available. After the registration statement is declared effective, Matinas will mail a definitive proxy statement/prospectus to its stockholders.
Investors, stockholders, shareholders, and other interested persons are urged to read the proxy statement/prospectus and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) when they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed business combination and related matters. Matinas stockholders will be able to obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus, when available, and other documents filed with the SEC by Matinas or GHP International by directing a request to jjabbour@MatinasBioPharma.com. These documents will also be available, without charge, on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
Participants in the solicitation
Matinas, GH Power, GHP International, and their respective directors, executive officers, and other members of management and employees may, under SEC rules, be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from Matinas stockholders in connection with the proposed business combination and related matters. Investors and security holders may obtain more detailed information regarding the names, affiliations, and interests of Matinas’s directors and executive officers in the sections titled “Directors and Executive Officers” and “Executive Compensation” in Matinas’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, filed with the SEC on March 31, 2026, which is available at https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1582554/000149315226014132/form10-k.htm. Information regarding the persons who may be deemed participants in the solicitation and a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be included in the proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials when they become available. These documents, once available, may be obtained free of charge from the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or by directing a request to jjabbour@MatinasBioPharma.com.
No offer or solicitation
This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval with respect to the proposed business combination or any other transaction described herein. No securities may be offered or sold in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful before registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction. No offering of securities in connection with the proposed transaction will be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, pursuant to an exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, registration requirements, or pursuant to applicable prospectus exemptions under Canadian securities laws.
Forward-looking statements
This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws regarding the proposed business combination involving Matinas, GH Power, and GHP International. These statements include, among others, statements regarding the anticipated benefits and timing of the proposed business combination; GH Power’s assets, technology, development plans, and commercial opportunities; the PIPE financing; the expected ownership, capitalization, and listing of GHP International; satisfaction of closing conditions; access to public capital markets; commercialization and project deployment; strategic partnerships and market opportunities; financing and use of proceeds; and future financial condition, performance, and strategy. Forward-looking statements generally may be identified by words such as “believe,” “project,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “intend,” “strategy,” “future,” “opportunity,” “potential,” “plan,” “may,” “should,” “will,” “would,” “will continue,” “will likely result,” and similar expressions.
Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks include, but are not limited to: the risk that the proposed business combination may not be completed in a timely manner or at all; failure to satisfy closing conditions, including Matinas stockholder approval, GH Power securityholder approval, Ontario court approvals, effectiveness of the Form F-4 registration statement, completion of GH Power financing resulting in gross proceeds of at least $15.0 million, GHP International qualifying as a foreign private issuer at closing, and listing of GHP International’s securities on the NYSE American; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the proposed business combination; costs associated with the proposed business combination and becoming a public company; changes in business, market, financial, political, and regulatory conditions; risks relating to GHP International’s anticipated operations and business; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Matinas, GH Power, GHP International, or others following announcement of the proposed business combination; and the risk factors discussed in documents that Matinas has filed, or that Matinas and/or GHP International will file, with the SEC. Matinas, GH Power, and GHP International undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law.
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