Artificial intelligence (AI) firm OpenAI wants to build data centers that consume more power than the whole United Kingdom.
The company behind ChatGPT pitched the idea during a meeting with U.S. officials at the White House, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other tech leaders in attendance. OpenAI proposed building five to seven data centers in various U.S. states.
When completed, each of these data centers would need five gigawatts (GW) of electricity to operate. "To put that in context, five GW is roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors, or enough to power almost three million homes," Bloomberg News pointed out.
"The startup shared a documents with government officials outlining the economic and national security benefits of building data centers, based on an analysis the company engaged with outside experts on. 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. To achieve that, however, the U.S. needs policies that support greater data center capacity."
A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based OpenAI provided a statement to Bloomberg News, saying: "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."
But energy executives, including Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez, believe that powering even a single five-GW data center would be a challenge.
"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," he said. "It's certainly not possible under a timeframe that's going to address national security and timing."
Other tech giants also following suit
The Daily Sceptic explained why the data centers Altman's company plans to build are a big deal.
"For context, consider that a one GW data center would consume 8.76 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity every year. Seven of Altman's enormous five-GW data centers would consume 306.6 TWh," it said. Based on the Digest of U.K. Energy Statistics data, the U.K. generated 292.6 TWh in 2023.
"The plans for ChatGPT alone would consume more electricity in a year than the U.K., the sixth largest economy in the world, managed to generate."
OpenAI isn't the only company pitching large-scale data centers in anticipation of AI's growth as other firms have also insinuated similar plans. In September, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison announced that Oracle was designing a data center that would consume more than one GW. Three small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) would power this data center.
Bill Gates' Microsoft also announced a deal with Constellation Energy. Under the deal, the energy firm will restart the 835 megawatt (MW) Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant to power the tech giant's data centers. The move mirrored Amazon's decision in March, when the e-commerce giant founded by Jeff Bezos bought a 960 MW data center powered by an adjacent nuclear power station. (Related: Microsoft to bring infamous nuclear plant back to life to feed POWER-HUNGRY AI data centers).
In April, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms also discussed building data centers that would consume one GW of power. According to him, the buildout of AI data centers could be impeded by energy requirements. Later, Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned that the search engine giant is also working on one GW data centers being invested in SMRs.
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