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.
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