OpenAI's Ambitious Plan to Build Massive AI Data Centers Sparks Energy Concerns

OpenAI pitched White House on unprecedented data center buildout

By Shirin Ghaffary, Bloomberg News The Tribune Content Agency OpenAI has pitched the Biden administration on the need for massive data centers that could each use as much power as entire cities, framing the unprecedented expansion as necessary to develop more advanced artificial intelligence models and compete with China. Following a recent meeting at the White House, which was attended by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and other tech leaders, the startup shared a document with government officials outlining the economic and national security benefits of building 5 gigawatt data centers in various U.S. states, based on an analysis the company engaged with outside experts on. To put that in context, 5 GW is roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors, or enough to power almost 3 million homes. OpenAI said investing in these facilities would result in tens of thousands of new jobs, boost the gross domestic product and ensure the U.S. can maintain its lead in AI development, according to the document, which was viewed by Bloomberg News. To achieve that, however, the U.S. needs policies that support greater data center capacity, the document said. Altman has spent much of this year trying to form a global coalition of investors to fund the costly physical infrastructure required to support rapid AI development, while also working to secure the U.S. government's blessing for the project. But the details on the energy capacity of the data centers Altman and OpenAI are calling for have not previously been reported. "OpenAI is actively working to strengthen AI infrastructure in the U.S., which we believe is critical to keeping America at the forefront of global innovation, boosting reindustrialization across the country, and making AI's benefits accessible to everyone," a spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement provided to Bloomberg News. The push comes as power projects in the U.S. are facing delays due to long wait times to connect to grids, permitting delays, supply chain issues and labor shortages. But energy executives have said powering even a single 5 gigawatt data center would be a challenge. Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation Energy Corp., said he has heard Altman is talking about building five to seven data centers that are each 5 GW. The document shared with the White House does not provide a specific number. OpenAI's aim is to focus on a single data center to start, but with plans to potentially expand from there, according to a person familiar with the matter. "Whatever we're talking about is not only something that's never been done, but I don't believe it's feasible as an engineer, as somebody who grew up in this," Dominguez told Bloomberg News. "It's certainly not possible under a timeframe that's going to address national security and timing." The U.S. has a total of 96 GW of installed capacity of nuclear power. Last week, OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft Corp., struck a deal with Constellation in which the nuclear provider will restart the shuttered Three Mile Island facility solely to provide Microsoft with nuclear power for two decades. In June, John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy Inc., said the clean-energy giant had received requests from some tech companies to find sites that can support 5 GW of demand, without naming any specific firms. "Think about that. That's the size of powering the city of Miami," he said. That much power would require a mix of new wind and solar farms, battery storage and a connection to the grid, Ketchum said. He added that finding a site that could accommodate 5 GW would take some work, but there are places in the U.S. that can fit 1 gigawatt.

Behind OpenAI's audacious plan to make AI flow like electricity

Late last year, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, started pitching an audacious plan that he hoped would create the computing power his company needed to build more powerful artificial intelligence. In meetings with investors in the United Arab Emirates, computer chip makers in Asia and officials in Washington, he proposed that they unite on a multitrillion-dollar effort to erect new computer chip factories and data centers across the globe, including in the Middle East. Though some participants and regulators balked at parts of the plan, the talks have continued and expanded into Europe and Canada. OpenAI's blueprint for the world's technology future, which was described to The New York Times by nine people close to the company's discussions, would create countless data centers providing a global reservoir of computing power dedicated to building the next generation of AI. As far-fetched as it may have seemed, Altman's campaign showed how in just a few years he has become one of the world's most influential tech executives, able in a span of weeks to gain an audience with Middle Eastern money, Asian manufacturing giants and top U.S. regulators. It was also a demonstration of the tech industry's determination to accelerate the development of a technology it claims could be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. When word leaked that Altman, 39, was looking for trillions of dollars, he was mocked for seeking investments equivalent to roughly a quarter of the annual economic output of the United States. Officials in Washington also expressed concerns that a U.S. company was trying to build vital technology in the Middle East. To build AI infrastructure in a number of countries, U.S. companies would need approval from U.S. officials who oversee export controls. Altman has since scaled his ambition down to hundreds of billions of dollars, the nine people said, and hatched a new strategy: Court U.S. government officials by first helping to build data centers in the United States. It is still unclear how all this would work. OpenAI has tried to assemble a loose federation of companies, including data center builders like Microsoft as well as investors and chipmakers. But the particulars of who would pay the money, who would get it and what they would even build are hazy. At the same time, OpenAI has been in separate talks to raise $6.5 billion to support its own business, a deal that would value the startup at $150 billion. The UAE's technology investment firm, MGX, is among the group of potential investors, which also includes Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple and Tiger Global, three people familiar with the conversations said. OpenAI is seeking cash because its costs far outpace its revenue, the three people said. It annually collects more than $3 billion in sales while spending about $7 billion. Some of OpenAI's plans have been previously reported by Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Conversations with the nine people close to the talks, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, provide a fuller picture of the efforts and how the strategy has evolved. (The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.) In private conversations, Altman has compared the world's data centers with electricity, according to three people close to the discussions. As the availability of electricity became more widespread, people found better ways of using it. Altman hoped to do the same with data centers and eventually make AI technologies flow like electricity. Chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT learn their skills by analyzing troves of digital data. But there is a shortage of the chips and data centers that drive this process. If that supply grows, OpenAI believes it can build more powerful AI systems. In dozens of meetings, OpenAI executives have prodded tech companies and investors to expand global computing power, the nine people close to the company's discussions said. "Sam is thinking about how OpenAI remains relevant," said Daniel Newman, CEO of the Futurum Group, a tech research firm. "It needs more compute, more connectivity, more power." Altman's original plan called for the UAE to fund the construction of multiple chipmaking plants, which can cost as much as $43 billion each. The plan would reduce chip manufacturing costs for companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest chip producer. TSMC makes semiconductors for Nvidia, the leading developer of AI chips. The plan would allow Nvidia to churn out more chips. OpenAI and other companies would use those chips in more AI data centers. Altman and his colleagues discussed building the data centers in the UAE, a nation with excess electrical power. In the United States, it has been hard for companies to build new data centers because there is not enough electrical power to run them. OpenAI discussed funding the infrastructure plan with MGX, an AI-focused investment vehicle created by the UAE. It also met with TSMC, Nvidia and another chip company, Samsung. Omar Sultan Al Olama, the UAE's minister of state for AI, told the Times in a March interview that there "is a business case" for going after such a giant deal. Nvidia declined to comment. MGX and Samsung did not respond to requests for comment. OpenAI said in a statement that it was focused on building infrastructure in the United States "with the goals of ensuring the U.S. remains the global leader in innovation, driving re-industrialization across the country and ensuring AI's benefits are widely accessible." Will Moss, a spokesperson for TSMC, said the company was open to discussions about expanding semiconductor development but was concentrating on its current global expansion projects and had "no new investment plans to disclose at this time." When Altman visited TSMC's headquarters in Taiwan shortly after he started his fundraising effort, he told its executives that it would take $7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers to fulfill his vision, two people briefed on the conversation said. It was his first visit to one of the multibillion-dollar plants. TSMC's executives found the idea so absurd that they took to calling Altman a "podcasting bro," one of these people said. Adding just a few more chipmaking plants, much less 36, was incredibly risky because of the money involved. "We are not, nor have we ever been considering multitrillion-dollar projects. While the total investment needed for the global infrastructure of AI to be fully built out by everyone could cost trillions over several decades, what OpenAI is specifically exploring is on the scale of hundreds of billions," said Liz Bourgeois, an OpenAI spokesperson. Around the same time, Altman visited South Korea and held talks with two chipmakers in the country: Samsung and SK Hynix. But he soon ran into national security concerns over a prominent role for the UAE in developing a technology that many consider critical to the economy and warfare. Some White House officials and congressional leaders are afraid that approving the infrastructure to be built in the UAE could give China a back door to important technologies. National security researchers have found evidence that some UAE universities have worked with Chinese universities with ties to Beijing's military, said Sihao Huang, a technology fellow at the RAND Corp. Talks with the Department of Commerce, the UAE and chipmakers are continuing. OpenAI has also expanded its discussions into other parts of the world, according to four people familiar with those talks. In the spring, company executives held meetings with Japanese officials in Tokyo. They laid out a plan for building data centers powered by electricity from nuclear power plants that were decommissioned after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. During one meeting, a Japanese official laughed when OpenAI said it was seeking 5 gigawatts of electrical power, about a thousand times the power that an average data center consumes, a person familiar with the meeting said. Later, in meetings with officials in Germany, OpenAI explored building a data center in the North Sea so it could tap into 7 gigawatts of power from offshore wind turbines, the person said. But political pressures have forced OpenAI to explore options in the United States. During a White House meeting with other tech leaders this month, Altman presented an OpenAI study called "Infrastructure Is Destiny." The study called for new data centers in the United States, two people familiar with the meeting said. Built at a cost of $100 billion each -- about 20 times the cost of today's most powerful data centers -- they would hold 2 million AI chips and consume 5 gigawatts of electricity. As he spoke, Altman sat in front of a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who poured money into massive infrastructure projects like New York's Lincoln Tunnel, two people familiar with the discussion said. The OpenAI chief told White House officials -- including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser -- that AI data centers would be a catalyst for the re-industrialization of America, creating as many as 500,000 jobs. Altman also warned that the United States risked falling behind China and that if the United States did not work with the UAE, China would instead. This week, President Joe Biden and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE president, met at the White House and directed their senior officials to develop a memorandum detailing future collaboration on AI. To bolster its efforts, OpenAI has hired Chris Lehane, a Clinton White House lawyer, as its vice president of global policy, along with two people from the Commerce Department who worked on the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law designed to increase domestic chip manufacturing. One of them will manage future infrastructure projects and policy. Speaking last week at an investor event for T-Mobile, which is a customer of OpenAI, Altman struck a modest tone about the company's ambitions. "We build on a gigantic amount of work that has come before us," he said. "If you think about all that had to happen throughout human history to discover semiconductors and build chips and networks and these massive data centers, we're just doing our one little bit on the very top of that."

OpenAI pitches Biden admin on need for massive data centers -- that...

OpenAI has pitched the Biden administration on the need to build massive data centers that consume as much power as a major city to handle more advanced artificial intelligence models as global competition rises, according to a report. A slew of tech leaders - including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and executives from Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft and Google - met with White House officials last week to discuss the future of AI infrastructure throughout the country. Soon after the meeting, OpenAI shared a document with the White House detailing the benefits of building 5 gigawatt data centers - facilities consuming the equivalent output of five nuclear reactors and enough to power 3 million homes, according to Bloomberg News. In June, tech companies reportedly asked clean-energy company NextEra to find locations that could handle 5 gigawatts of nuclear energy. "We've had some come to us and say, 'Can you show us sites that can accommodate 5 gigawatts of demand?'" NextEra CEO John Ketchum told Bloomberg News in June. "Think about that. That's the size of powering the city of Miami." Ketchum declined to specify which tech companies made the inquiries. The US needs greater data capacity to secure a win in the global AI race, according to the memo, which claimed that Chinese startups increasingly pose a competitive threat, as reported by Bloomberg News. OpenAI is focused on a single large scale data center being built in the US with possible expansion in the future, a source familiar with OpenAI's plans told The Post. The 5-gigawatt facilities would create tens of thousands of new jobs, raise the gross domestic product and secure the US' lead in the AI race, the document said. The company is focused on expanding AI infrastructure throughout the country, an OpenAI spokesperson told The Post. OpenAI is focused on "ensuring the US remains the global leader in innovation, driving reindustrialization across the country, and ensuring AI's benefits are widely accessible," the spokesperson told The Post in a statement. Power projects in the US have faced logjams thanks to supply chain issues and labor shortages - and energy executives have said that even one 5 gigawatt data center would be a tall order. Constellation Energy Corp. CEO Joe Dominguez told Bloomberg News he has heard Altman is discussing building between five to seven 5 gigawatt centers. A source close to OpenAI's plans told The Post this estimate is inaccurate. The OpenAI document did not provide a specific number of proposed data centers. "Whatever we're talking about is not only something that's never been done, but I don't believe it's feasible as an engineer, as somebody who grew up in this," Dominguez told Bloomberg News. "It's certainly not possible under a timeframe that's going to address national security and timing." Last week, Microsoft said it penned a data center deal with Constellation Energy to resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant - the site of America's worst nuclear disaster. The company will reboot the shuttered facility to provide Microsoft with nuclear power for two decades. Tech leaders have repeatedly emphasized the importance of energy infrastructure in advancing AI efforts in the US. "We're at the beginning of a new industrial revolution," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC as he left the White House last week. "This industry is going to be producing intelligence, and what it takes is energy... So we've got to make sure that everybody understands the needs coming, the opportunities of it, the challenges of it, and doing it in the most efficient and scalable way we can." White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson told CNBC the Biden-Harris administration is committed to seeing data centers built in the US "while ensuring the technology is developed responsibly." Several American power and energy companies along with government commerce and energy officials attended last week's meeting.

OpenAI asked US to approve energy-guzzling 5GW data centers, report says

OpenAI stokes China fears to woo US approvals for huge data centers, report says. OpenAI hopes to convince the White House to approve a sprawling plan that would place 5-gigawatt AI data centers in different US cities, Bloomberg reports. The AI company's CEO, Sam Altman, supposedly pitched the plan after a recent meeting with the Biden administration where stakeholders discussed AI infrastructure needs. Bloomberg reviewed an OpenAI document outlining the plan, reporting that 5 gigawatts "is roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors" and warning that each data center will likely require "more energy than is used to power an entire city or about 3 million homes." According to OpenAI, the US needs these massive data centers to expand AI capabilities domestically, protect national security, and effectively compete with China. If approved, the data centers would generate "thousands of new jobs," OpenAI's document promised, and help cement the US as an AI leader globally. But the energy demand is so enormous that OpenAI told officials that the "US needs policies that support greater data center capacity," or else the US could fall behind other countries in AI development, the document said. Energy executives told Bloomberg that "powering even a single 5-gigawatt data center would be a challenge," as power projects nationwide are already "facing delays due to long wait times to connect to grids, permitting delays, supply chain issues, and labor shortages." Most likely, OpenAI's data centers wouldn't rely entirely on the grid, though, instead requiring a "mix of new wind and solar farms, battery storage and a connection to the grid," John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy Inc, told Bloomberg. That's a big problem for OpenAI, since one energy executive, Constellation Energy Corp. CEO Joe Dominguez, told Bloomberg that he's heard that OpenAI wants to build five to seven data centers. "As an engineer," Dominguez said he doesn't think that OpenAI's plan is "feasible" and would seemingly take more time than needed to address current national security risks, as US-China tensions worsen. OpenAI may be hoping to avoid delays and cut the lines -- if the White House approves the company's ambitious data center plan. For now, a person familiar with OpenAI's plan told Bloomberg that OpenAI is focused on launching a single data center before expanding the project to "various US cities." Bloomberg's report comes after OpenAI's chief investor, Microsoft, announced a 20-year deal with Constellation to re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide a new energy source for data centers powering AI development and other technologies. But even if that deal is approved by regulators, the resulting energy supply that Microsoft could access -- roughly 835 megawatts (0.835 gigawatts) of energy generation, which is enough to power approximately 800,000 homes -- is still more than five times less than OpenAI's 5-gigawatt demand for its data centers. Ketchum told Bloomberg that it's easier to find a US site for a 1-gigawatt data center, but locating a site for a 5-gigawatt facility would likely be a bigger challenge. Notably, Amazon recently bought a $650 million nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania with 2.5-gigawatt capacity. At the meeting with the Biden administration, OpenAI suggested opening large-scale data centers in Wisconsin, California, Texas, and Pennsylvania, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC. During that meeting, the Biden administration confirmed that developing large-scale AI data centers is a priority, announcing "a new Task Force on AI Datacenter Infrastructure to coordinate policy across government." OpenAI seems to be trying to get the task force's attention early on, outlining in the document that Bloomberg reviewed the national security and economic benefits its data centers could provide for the US. In a statement to Bloomberg, OpenAI's spokesperson said that "OpenAI is actively working to strengthen AI infrastructure in the US, which we believe is critical to keeping America at the forefront of global innovation, boosting reindustrialization across the country, and making AI's benefits accessible to everyone." Big Tech companies and AI startups will likely continue pressuring officials to approve data center expansions, as well as new kinds of nuclear reactors as the AI explosion globally continues. Goldman Sachs estimated that "data center power demand will grow 160 percent by 2030." To ensure power supplies for its AI, according to the tech news site Freethink, Microsoft has even been training AI to draft all the documents needed for proposals to secure government approvals for nuclear plants to power AI data centers.

Behind OpenAI's Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity

Late last year, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, started pitching an audacious plan that he hoped would create the computing power his company needed to build more powerful artificial intelligence. In meetings with investors in the United Arab Emirates, computer chip makers in Asia and officials in Washington, he proposed that they unite on a multitrillion-dollar effort to erect new computer chip factories and data centers across the globe, including in the Middle East. Though some participants and regulators balked at parts of the plan, the talks have continued and expanded into Europe and Canada. OpenAI's blueprint for the world's technology future, which was described to The New York Times by nine people close to the company's discussions, would create countless data centers providing a global reservoir of computing power dedicated to building the next generation of A.I. As far-fetched as it may have seemed, Mr. Altman's campaign showed how in just a few years he has become one of the world's most influential tech executives, able in a span of weeks to gain an audience with Middle Eastern money, Asian manufacturing giants and top U.S. regulators. It was also a demonstration of the tech industry's determination to accelerate the development of a technology it claims could be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. When word leaked that Mr. Altman, 39, was looking for trillions of dollars, he was mocked for seeking investments equivalent to roughly a quarter of the annual economic output of the United States. Officials in Washington also expressed concerns that a U.S. company was trying to build vital technology in the Middle East. To build A.I. infrastructure in a number of countries, American companies would need approval from United States officials who oversee export controls.

Altman reportedly trying to sell Biden on a slew of AI DCs

With 2.5 million Blackwell GPUs, would gobble enough energy to power millions of homes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly trying to convince the Biden administration that an enormous network of AI datacenters, each consuming up to five gigawatts of power, is imperative to ensuring US national security and maintaining its technological lead over China. The proposal, detailed in a document reviewed by Bloomberg this week, outlines the merits of building several such datacenters across the United States. The report comes just weeks after Altman and other tech leaders met at the White House to discuss the proliferation of AI technologies and infrastructure. Citing executives at Constellation Energy Corp., Bloomberg also reported that Altman may be planning as many as 5-7 such datacenters, but will start with one. However, building even one of these facilities will be a daunting task. Five gigawatts is an enormous amount of power, with each of these datacenters requiring roughly equivalent to the output of five pressurized water nuclear reactors. The power stations required to maintain these facilities would be among the largest in the US, second only to the Grand Coulee hydro plant located in Washington state, which has a rated capacity of 6.8 gigawatts. The next largest plants, Georgia's Alvin W. Vogtle and Arizona's Palo Verde power stations are nuclear with each containing four reactors capable of generating about 4.6 and 3.9 gigawatts, respectively. What's more, excess capacity is already a limiting factor for many datacenter developments. A CBRE report from late last month found that a shortage of power and the equipment necessary to harness it is leading to delays. With power in such high demand, cloud providers are already taking extreme measures to ensure they don't fall behind in the AI race. Last week, Microsoft became the latest cloud provider to embrace nuclear power, after it announced a 20 year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy to bring the 837-megawatt Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant back online. Earlier this year, Amazon cozied up to Talen Energy, which owns and operates the Susquehanna nuclear plant, acquiring its Cumulus datacenter facilities for $650 million. Under the deal Amazon will eventually gain access to up to 960 megawatts of power. Oracle's founder Larry Ellison is even talking about eventually deploying small modular reactors to fuel the database giant's AI expansion. Even if the US can overcome the power challenges, there's still the issue of sourcing enough accelerators to fill those datacenters. Assuming a power use effectiveness (PUE) of 1.1, we estimate a five-gigawatt facility could support in excess of 35,000 of Nvidia's Grace-Blackwell NVL72 rack-scale systems -- or roughly 2.5 million Blackwell GPUs. Again, this is just speculation to highlight what an undertaking this would be. On that note, recently the Uptime Institute estimated that Nvidia shipped roughly 600,000 H100s in 2023 and predicted the GPU giant would ship somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million chips this year. Further down the chain, there's no guarantee TSMC would be able to keep up, especially considering how constrained the CoWoS packaging capacity required to build these chips already is, is another matter entirely. Of course, zany, over-the-top ideas are Altman's signature move. Earlier this year, it was reported that he had floated a $7 trillion project to establish a network of chip factories to fuel his AI ambitions. However, speaking at Intel's Foundry event in February, the OpenAI CEO reminded folks that not everything you read on the internet is true. So, for all we know, the datacenter plan Altman is reportedly trying to sell the Biden Administration on may simply be an exercise in getting the US government to think about the long-term investments necessary to support AI development going forward. The Register reached out to OpenAI for comment; we'll let you know if we hear anything back.®

Sam Altman's OpenAI Pushes Biden Administration For Massive 5GW Data Centers Equivalent To Output Of 5 Nuclear Reactors, Enough To Power Nearly 3M Homes: Report

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has pitched President Joe Biden's administration for the expansion of data centers that consume the equivalent amount of energy to power three million households. What Happened: Following OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other tech leaders' meeting with The White House officials, the artificial intelligence startup shared a document outlining the economic and national security benefits of building five-gigawatt data centers across various U.S. states. Bloomberg obtained and reported the document on Wednesday. OpenAI has cited various reasons for the expansion of data centers including rising competition with China, boosting the gross domestic product, creation of new jobs, and development of advanced AI models, according to the report. Altman is reportedly in talks to build five to seven data centers, each of five gigawatts, according to Constellation Energy Corp CEO Joe Dominguez. Although the document shared with government officials does not specify any number. "OpenAI is actively working to strengthen AI infrastructure in the US, which we believe is critical to keeping America at the forefront of global innovation, boosting reindustrialization across the country, and making AI's benefits accessible to everyone," an OpenAI spokesperson said, according to the report. At five gigawatts, the capacity is equivalent to the output of five nuclear reactors, enough to power nearly three million homes, the report added. See Also: Warren Buffett Moves: Berkshire Hathaway Reduces Bank Of America Holdings By $863M Why It Matters: According to Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas, AI models, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, require substantial electricity, which could lead AI data centers to consume 20% to 25% of U.S. power needs by 2030, a significant increase from today's 4% or less. In April, Altman invested $20 million in Exowatt, an energy startup aiming to address the soaring electricity demands of AI data centers. However, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates defended the substantial increase in energy consumption due to AI systems, asserting that the technology would ultimately offset its high electricity usage. In a recent interview with Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, former President Donald Trump expressed his astonishment at the high energy requirements of AI. Trump acknowledged Musk's enthusiasm for AI but was taken aback by the technology's significant electricity demands. "This is shocking to me, but AI requires twice the energy that the country already produces," Trump stated. Last week, Constellation Energy signed a 20-year deal with OpenAI's biggest investor Microsoft to supply carbon-free energy, restarting Three Mile Island Unit 1. Read Next: Mark Cuban Calls Gary Gensler A 'Blight' After SEC Chair Gets Grilled On Crypto By Congress: 'You Leaving Is Worth A Point In GDP Growth' Image Via Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

OpenAI Pitched White House on Unprecedented Data Center Buildout

OpenAI has pitched the Biden administration on the need for massive data centers that could each use as much power as entire cities, framing the unprecedented expansion as necessary to develop more advanced artificial intelligence models and compete with China. Following a recent meeting at the White House, which was attended by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and other tech leaders, the startup shared a document with government officials outlining the economic and national security benefits of building 5 gigawatt data centers in various US states, based on an analysis the company engaged with outside experts on. To put that in context, 5 GW is roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors, or enough to power almost 3 million homes.

OpenAI pitched White House on need of massive 5GW data center buildout

By Shirin Ghaffary OpenAI has pitched the Biden administration on the need for massive data centers that could each use as much power as entire cities, framing the unprecedented expansion as necessary to develop more advanced artificial intelligence models and compete with China. Following a recent meeting at the White House, which was attended by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and other tech leaders, the startup shared a document with government officials outlining the economic and national security benefits of building 5 gigawatt data centers in various US states, based on an analysis the company engaged with outside experts on. To put that in context, 5 GW is roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors, or enough to power almost 3 million homes.