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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
AI Datacenters Are Raising Nearby Residents' Electric Bills
If you're looking for someone to blame for your ballooning energy bills, we have an increasingly familiar culprit: AI data centers. A new analysis of one the US's largest power grids, PJM, found that a rise in customer energy rates is directly attributable to the tremendous power demands of these data facilities that undergird services like OpenAI's ChatGPT, the Washington Post reports. Serving 67 million customers, the PJM region covers just over a dozen states, including Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, as well as DC. Some of these states will see their energy bills surge by more than 20 percent this summer, Reuters reported; in Philadelphia, according to WaPo, the typical bill rose by about $17. And in Columbus, Ohio, prices spiked by $27. "We are seeing every region of the country experience really significant data center load growth," Abe Silverman, a researcher of energy markets at Johns Hopkins University, told WaPo. "It's putting enormous upward pressure on prices, both for transmission and for generation." Using Columbus as an example again, customers are paying an extra $240 per year due to the power demand of AI data centers, WaPo calculated based on figures from local utility company AEP Ohio. One of the reasons for the soaring costs is that utility companies — which maintain the infrastructure that delivers your power, rather than generating it — are paying more for "capacity," or the total power that's made available to them. Utility companies bid for capacity at an annual auction, and last year, per WaPo, these auction prices soared by an eye-watering 833 percent. They rose again this year by another 22 percent. According to an independent monitor's report, about three-quarters of the surge in capacity prices are because of planned or existing data centers. "There has been a paradigm shift in the market," Joseph Bowring, the author of the independent monitor's report, told WaPo. "These data centers could overwhelm the grid. The system cannot go on this way." Generative AI's energy appetite is so voracious that companies like Microsoft and Google are firing up entire nuclear power plants to supply their data centers. Even heavily polluting coal plants are being kept online as a stopgap until these new facilities come online. And the Trump administration wants to build even more coal plants. It's not just the prices you should worry about, though, or the harrowing environmental toll, ranging from titanic carbon emissions to vaporizing entire lakes' worth of water. The huge spike in power demands are also putting immense stress on the aging power grids themselves, which are failing during brutal heatwaves and frigid winters. Some states are pushing back. Ohio regulators recently ruled that data center companies must pay more for their energy to help make upgrades to the power grid, WaPo noted. But the story's different in Virginia, which has more data centers than any other state — 596, according to the website Data Center Map, with the overwhelming majority up North near DC. To keep its numero uno status, Virginia is offering huge tax breaks to data center companies — meaning they get a free ride, and the state's taxpayers, if the latest trends keep up, get bigger energy bills. "The Big Tech companies suck up the electricity, and we end up paying higher prices," an Ohio resident told WaPo. "I'm not comfortable with average customers subsidizing billion-dollar companies." More on AI: Scientists Just Found Something Unbelievably Grim About Pollution Generated by AI Solve the daily Crossword
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
OpenAI Employees Plan $6 Billion Share Sale at $500 Billion Valuation
OpenAI is in talks to let current and former staff sell about $6 billion worth of shares. The group of buyers includes SoftBank Group (SFTBY), Thrive Capital, and Dragoneer Investment Group. If the deal goes through, it would place the company at a $500 billion value, which is up from $300 billion earlier this year. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. At the same time, OpenAI is also running a separate $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank. The firm has already secured $8.3 billion from investors and expects SoftBank to add $22.5 billion by the end of the year. By setting up both a primary raise and a secondary sale, the company is seeking to raise funds while also letting staff cash out a part of their equity. Revenue has been climbing at a fast pace. OpenAI doubled its revenue in the first seven months of 2025, which put it on an annual run rate of $12 billion. By the end of the year, the number is projected to hit $20 billion. This growth has been closely linked to strong use of ChatGPT, which has seen weekly active users rise to about 700 million. In fact, this move is like hitting two birds with one stone; the secondary sale gives staff a chance to gain from the rise in value without the firm going public, but also helps the company keep workers in place while rivals such as Meta (META) try to draw talent away. With staff able to sell at a high mark, the company can ease some of the pressure of talent competition. If completed, the deal would make OpenAI one of the most valuable private firms in the world. For context, the figure would even put it above SpaceX, which is valued at around $400 billion. Investors see the company's rapid climb in revenue and users as a sign of continued demand in the field of artificial intelligence. With TipRanks' Comparison Tool, we looked at several well-known companies that employ chatbots similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
Bringing in the ‘big guns': Sam Altman's campaign to keep ChatGPT on top
While Zingale is not an employee, tapping him to chart a path forward for a multibillion-dollar nonprofit is one more way Lehane has sought to work the public narrative in his favor. Zingale brought on Huerta, giving the recommendations the imprimatur of the legendary co-founder of the United Farm Workers at a time when labor groups fear AI will increasingly take jobs away from workers. Huerta, too, has decades of deep ties to Democratic politicians. She supported Harris during the 2020 primary and campaigned with her in 2024, supporting Democratic candidates dating back to Robert F. Kennedy. She told POLITICO that she met with some of OpenAI's researchers, but no members of the board or leadership. 'We didn't ask to meet with them, and they didn't ask to meet with us,' she said. Huerta said she had 'no idea' why she was asked to sit on the commission, but guessed it was because of her civil rights background. She said she didn't know if her agreeing to it had helped the company's reputation in California, as it faces regulatory scrutiny. (Both of Bonta's parents were involved in UFW organizing.) The commission's report strongly endorsed a nonprofit model for OpenAI with an oversight role for attorneys general and imagined the company as a new kind of philanthropic force. The advisers want OpenAI to fund a wide mix of ideas to prepare for AI's growing presence in everyday life, from supporting public parks and other common areas as AI-free spaces to research on the technology's safety risks. The day of the report's release, OpenAI held court with more than 1,000 nonprofit leaders at events across the country. It committed $50 million to fund civic group initiatives the next day, which Lehane said could come with additional AI tools, as part of his messaging on the good the company is prepared to do if regulators allow it to operate as it wants. 'Our single best lobbyist is our innovation,' Lehane said. A key piece of his approach, he added, has been to 'forge partnerships with stakeholders and entities that are going to be particularly relevant to the public conversation' and show them OpenAI's technology. Because the report is not binding, groups that weighed in are counting on Bonta to set the course. Ronnie Chatterji chief economist Chatterji is an alum of both the Obama White House and Biden administration, under which he oversaw the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act. As OpenAI's chief economist, he preaches the company message of allowing AI to flourish for the state's financial future. 'This is the largest nonprofit ever,' Bell said of why there has been such intense interest in the issue. 'We are talking about a scale that we simply have never seen before.' Lehane, too, is wielding that fact publicly, as Bonta weighs what to do with his investigation and OpenAI's billions of dollars remain, for now, headquartered in California. OpenAI recently appealed directly to Newsom and state lawmakers, sending them a curated report about the company's economic impact on the state, first reported by POLITICO. It was compiled by former Biden White House official Ronnie Chatterjee, now OpenAI's chief economist, and outlined the billions in revenue the state would lose if the company packs up, reaching nearly $6 billion in total economic impact in 2030. 'There is no state or country in the world today that would not want to be California when it comes to AI,' the report stated. But it warned: 'Provided, that is, that the state doesn't drive AI out of California through well-intended but not well-understood overregulation.'
