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Leading tech executives reportedly met at the White House on Thursday to discuss the intense energy usage of the artificial intelligence technologies their companies are working on.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, and Google (GOOGL) president Ruth Porat were expected to be at the meeting with White House officials, CNN first reported. Nvidia (NVDA) chief executive Jensen Huang and “several” power and utility companies were also part of the meeting, CNBC later said, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. Amazon Web Services (AMZN) chief executive Matt Garman and vice president of data center planning and delivery Kerry Person were also in attendance, an AWS spokesperson told Quartz.
The tech executives, White House officials, and American energy companies reportedly discussed how the public and private sectors can work together on infrastructure to sustainably support AI’s intense energy consumption. Discussions also reportedly covered data center capacity and semiconductor manufacturing. Tech giants’ emissions are climbing as they race to build more advanced — and increasingly power-hungry — AI tools. At risk are the climate goals laid out several years ago by companies including Google and Microsoft (MSFT).
Nvidia’s highly anticipated Blackwell AI chip, for example, consumes 1,200 watts of electricity — almost enough to power an average home in the U.S. Meanwhile, the share of U.S. electricity consumption by data centers, where most AI training and processing takes place, is expected to rise to 9.1% by the end of the decade — over double what it is now.
“We appreciated the opportunity to meet with senior administration officials to discuss efforts to ensure AI development in the US and the needs to modernize the nation’s utility grid, expedite permitting for new projects, and ensure timely grid connections for carbon-free energy projects that will drive growth in both the technology and manufacturing sectors,” an AWS spokesperson said in a statement shared with Quartz.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and other Biden-Harris administration officials were set to attend, according to CNN, but neither the president nor vice president were expected at the meeting.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris are committed to deepening U.S. leadership in AI by ensuring data centers are built in the United States while ensuring the technology is developed responsibly,” Robyn Patterson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement shared with CNN.
Neither the White House, OpenAI, nor Google immediately responded to a request for comment. An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed Amodei’s attendance with Quartz, while Nvidia declined to comment.
“This industry is going to be producing intelligence, and what it takes is energy,” Huang told CNBC after the meeting. “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.”
Huang also told CNBC that Nvidia is currently entering the full-volume production phase for Blackwell. The Nvidia leader said demand for its Blackwell chips is so high that customers are starting to feel “tense,” during a conversation with Goldman Sachs (GS) chief executive David Solomon at the firm’s Communacopia + Technology Conference on Wednesday.
