Trump to unveil investments to power AI boom
Empower your mind, elevate your skills
US president Donald Trump heads to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to announce energy and infrastructure deals intended to meet big tech's soaring demand for electricity needed to fuel the AI boom.Trump will make the announcement at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University.The tech world has fully embraced generative AI as the next wave of technology, but fears are growing that its massive electricity needs cannot be met by current infrastructure, particularly in the United States.Generative AI requires enormous computing power, mainly to run the energy-hungry processors from Nvidia, the California-based company that has become the world's most valuable company by market capitalisation.Officials expect that by 2028, tech companies will need as much as five gigawatts of power for AI -- enough electricity to power roughly five million homes.According to an official who spoke to Bloomberg, Trump's announcement will total $70 billion in investments.Top executives from BlackRock, Palantir, Anthropic, Exxon and Chevron are slated to participate, the official said.The funding will cover new data centers, power generation, grid infrastructure, AI training, and apprenticeship programs. Google said it is committing $25 billion to build AI-ready data centers in Pennsylvania and surrounding regions."We support President Trump's clear and urgent direction that our nation invest in AI... so that America can continue to lead in AI," said Ruth Porat, Google's president and chief investment officer, who attended the event.The search engine giant also announced a partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to to modernize two hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania, representing 670 MW of capacity on the regional grid.Senator David McCormick, from Pennsylvania, said the investments "are of enormous consequence to Pennsylvania, but they are also crucial to the future of the nation."His comments reflect the growing sentiment in Washington that the United States must not lose ground to China in the race to develop AI."If the United States does not lead this revolution on our own terms, we will hand control of our infrastructure, our data, our leadership, and our way of life to Communist China," McCormick wrote in a Fox News op-ed.Trump launched the "Stargate" project in January, aimed at investing up to $500 billion in US AI infrastructure -- primarily in response to growing competition with China.Japanese tech investor SoftBank, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and Oracle are investing $100 billion in the initial phase.Trump has also reversed many policies adopted by the previous Biden administration that imposed checks on developing powerful AI algorithms and limits on exports of advanced technology to certain allied countries.He is expected to outline his own blueprint for AI advancement later this month.
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