THE generative artificial intelligence The boom led to massive demand for electricity —and tech companies are turning to nuclear energy to power it.
A third of U.S. nuclear power plants are negotiating deals with tech companies to provide electricity to data centers that power key AI models, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, reports that Amazon Web Services is close to reaching a power deal with Constellation Energy, the nation’s largest nuclear power plant owner. The Amazon subsidiary purchased a nuclear-powered data center of Talen Energy in March for $650 million. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As tech companies race to develop bigger, more powerful AI models, the overwhelming demand for electricity to power the technology could finally slow down the raceIn April, Ami Badani, chief marketing officer of chip design company Arm, said: Data centers currently represent 2% of global energy consumptionWith the rapid growth of AI, Badani predicted that industrial energy consumption could account for a quarter of total U.S. energy consumption by the end of the decade.
“We won’t be able to continue progress in AI without tackling the issue of energy,” Badani said. “ChatGPT requires 15 times more energy than traditional web search. »
By 2030, data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity — more than double what is currently used, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.
In April, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was one of Exowatt’s investors, a startup developing modules that store energy as heat and produce electricity for AI data centers. The startup raised $20 million in a funding round that also included venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
