The firms that decide where an artificial-intelligence campus gets its power, where its water goes and how its halls are arranged sit a year or more ahead of the contractors who pull the cable. Three of the largest reported their June quarters this month. The most striking number came from Jacobs Solutions, a Dallas design and program-management firm of about 47,000 people, and it was not a growth number — it was the distance between two growth numbers.

The fee and the pass-through

Jacobs' quarterly revenue rose 34.6% to $4.08bn. Gross profit rose 7.3%, to $811m. Gross margin fell 506 basis points to 19.9%. Nothing went wrong: the large sole-source engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) awards that carry the AI work book procurement and construction spending as revenue, inflating the top line without adding fee. On management's preferred measure — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as a share of net revenue — the margin expanded more than 100 basis points, to 15.2%.

The demand underneath is real and, unusually, quantified. Jacobs reported record backlog of $28.9bn, up 27%, and put direct AI data-center build-out at 11% of adjusted net revenue, roughly a percentage point higher than the prior quarter. Visibility on that pipeline has stretched from six-to-nine months to two-to-three years. In July it won a sole-source EPCM role on Hut 8's Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, a follow-on to its work at the same client's Louisiana site — the position is incumbency, not price. Jacobs has been engineer of record for Intel for decades and now ranks first in 18 Engineering News-Record categories, data centers among them. Adjusted earnings per share grew 14%, and guidance was raised for a third straight quarter.

The shares have moved with it: up 31% in three months. Price per dollar of trailing gross profit has gone from 4.90x in early May to 5.65x, and the forward multiple is 20.7x.

AECOM: a record book and a GAAP loss

AECOM, a 51,000-person infrastructure consultancy selling design and program management mostly to public agencies, took a $337m pretax charge on a public-private-partnership design-build project bid back in 2018. That pushed quarterly gross profit negative and produced an $86.7m net loss. It also carries about $500m of cash out through the first half of 2027 and cut free-cash-flow guidance to $300m from $400m.

Underneath, backlog hit a record $27.8bn with book-to-burn of 1.6x. But AECOM disclosed no dollar figure for data centers at all, describing them only as fast-growing while touting its pipeline on the call. The drivers it did quantify were governmental: a defense pipeline up 30%, a US water pipeline up 30%, and a $580bn surface-transportation reauthorization moving through Congress. At 16.3x forward earnings it is the cheapest name here, and the only one whose shares are still in a downtrend, with the 50-day average below the 200-day.

The control outran the protagonists

Tetra Tech, a Pasadena water-and-environment consultancy weighted to federal and municipal budgets, should be the name AI leaves behind. Its data-center work is about $60m annualized against a revenue guide of roughly $4.3bn. Yet its shares are up 35% over three months, more than Jacobs. Its quarter was the weakest of the three: revenue up 13.5%, gross profit down 3.3%, operating income down 4.3%. Its forward price/earnings of 23.5x sits above its trailing 22.2x — consensus expects earnings to fall. Stantec, the Canadian peer, has not reported since February and went nowhere.

And the month's headline gain for these firms was mostly two sessions at two small companies. Bowman Consulting jumped 55.5% on 10 August when Bernhard Capital Partners agreed to take it private for $43.00 a share in cash, about $1.0bn, a 58% premium; it has traded in a flat band since. Willdan gapped 17% on 7 August on a guidance raise, with commercial work — data-center power and grid reliability — now a quarter of its business. Strip those two days and the group's month is roughly seven points, not nineteen.

What the bond shock separated

One divergence was clean. When the 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.33% on 18 August, a 19-year high, EMCOR fell 8.4% over four sessions and Dycom 6.6%. Jacobs rose 2.8%, AECOM 5.5%. The designers finance nothing, carry no equipment and bill hours; the installers carry working capital and fleets. EMCOR's own order book, at a record $17.1bn of remaining performance obligations, up 43.9%, confirms the same demand the designers describe — it simply reprices differently when discount rates jump.

The setup

Where it stands — Jacobs is the only one of these firms disclosing a quantified AI data-center share of revenue; AECOM is cheapest and least exposed. Would confirm — Jacobs' AI share of adjusted net revenue rising above 12% in the October quarter with net-revenue book-to-bill above 1.2x. Would invalidate — Jacobs' gross profit growth staying in single digits while adjusted EBITDA margin on net revenue slips below 15%. Watch next — Jacobs' fiscal fourth quarter and full-year results, due November, against guidance of $7.20-7.30 adjusted EPS. Valuation — Jacobs 20.7x forward and 5.65x trailing gross profit, against 4.90x in early May; AECOM 16.3x forward, Tetra Tech 23.5x.