Nextpower controls 55% of the U.S. solar tracker market, holds a project backlog above $6 billion, and has spent five years buying its way from a single-product vendor into a diversified solar-and-storage platform. The company, formerly named Nextracker until a rebranding last year, now trades at a $15 billion market cap with its stock up 12% this year, and it ranked 24th this year on Fortune's Fastest-Growing Companies list.

What does the company actually make?

Nextpower builds solar trackers: motorized arrays that move slowly through the day to keep panels oriented toward the sun. CEO and cofounder Dan Shugar frames the technology in botanical terms. "The trackers do what sunflowers have been doing for millions of years," Shugar told Fortune. "They basically follow the sun during the day, and they can produce almost 30% more energy. It depends on the location and the project design."

The company, 13 years old, has since abandoned the pure-play model. "We moved from a pure-play tracker company, and we developed a platform strategy to do everything in solar except make the solar cells," Shugar said. "And we're doing everything in batteries except make the battery cells."

Globally, Nextpower holds about 30% of the tracker market.

Why is Wall Street backing it?

Jefferies energy analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith this month named Nextpower the firm's "franchise pick" in the power and utilities sector, calling it a "bet on the highest quality in a totally disregarded sector." His reasoning is cyclical: the clean-energy sector bottomed out during the first two years of the Trump administration, and Dumoulin-Smith expects a rebound after Democrats take over in January following the midterm elections. Nextpower's push into battery energy storage, he added, makes it an investment in storage as well as solar — a diversification bonus.

How much has it bought?

The acquisition record is extensive. Thirteen deals in five years, according to Shugar. The recent ones:

• Prevalon Energy — battery storage business, acquired in July for up to $365 million.
• Zigor — Spain-based power inverter maker, including its U.S. subsidiary Apex Power, for $80.5 million, also in July.
• Zimmermann PV-Steel Group — German solar business, purchased in October for $378 million to expand in Europe.
• Bentek — solar electrical components and hardware, bought last year for $78 million.
• Origami Solar — solar panel frame business, acquired last year for $53 million.

The battery business in particular makes Nextpower more attractive to the AI and robotics industries, Shugar argued, as hyperscalers build power-hungry data centers.

Is solar still growing under Trump?

Yes, despite the administration's attacks on renewable energy — especially offshore wind. Solar remains the fastest-growing source of power in the United States. "It's the dominant form of new power being installed," Shugar said.

Texas, an oil state, is now neck-and-neck with California for the most utility-scale solar capacity, with each state holding over 15 gigawatts. One gigawatt at full strength powers roughly 750,000 homes. About 80% of new U.S. solar projects are built with battery storage, which lets plants deploy stored electricity at night and operate closer to non-stop baseload power.

Nextpower has also insulated itself on cost. Early in the pandemic, it began onshoring manufacturing within the U.S., opening or acquiring factories across the country. That domestic footprint, Shugar said, leaves last year's tariff rises and this year's diesel price spike relatively muted for the company. Tracker advances also extend solar's usable geography: higher productivity makes projects economic on land that is not simply flat and barren.

What threatens the model?

The Trump administration's elimination of tax credits for solar and wind projects last year is the biggest long-term headwind. Most projects currently in the works have until 2030 to complete construction with the tax break intact. "We've had our project backlog triple since we went public four years ago," Shugar said. "Our backlog was $2 billion. Today, it's over $6 billion."

Congress is separately considering infrastructure permitting reform that would, in theory, accelerate approval and construction of transmission lines and solar farms.

The numbers beyond 2030 are harder. Energy research firm Enverus calculates that new solar contracts would need to rise about 49% to offset the lost credits, though the next presidential administration, starting in 2029, could work with Congress to restore them. Shugar pointed out that nuclear and fossil fuel plants still receive federal subsidies in other forms — and he wants symmetry. "If more power is a national imperative, then everything should be incentivized to come online," he said. "But we don't want to see the government picking winners and losers."