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Generative AI requires massive amounts of power and water, and the aging U.S. grid can't handle the load


Data centers are being built at a rapid pace to support generative AI, and concerns are mounting about whether we can generate enough power to fuel the growth.

The chip company's low-power processors have become increasingly popular with hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon — precisely because they can reduce power use by up to 15% in data centers. "We suspect that the amount of demand that we'll see from AI-specific applications will be as much or more than we've seen historically from cloud computing," said Jeff Tench, Vantage Data Center's executive vice president of North America and APAC. "The industry itself is looking for places where there is either proximate access to renewables, either wind or solar, and other infrastructure that can be leveraged, whether it be part of an incentive program to convert what would have been a coal-fired plant into natural gas, or increasingly looking at ways in which to offtake power from nuclear facilities," Tench said.

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