OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang met with senior US administration officials and other industry leaders at the White House, where they discussed steps to address massive infrastructure needs for artificial intelligence (AI) projects.
Attendees included Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google president Ruth Porat, Amazon.com Inc cloud chief Matt Garman and Microsoft Corp president Brad Smith, a White House statement on Thursday’s meeting said.
The government officials included US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
Photo: Dado Ruvic, Reuters
Following the talks, the White House announced an interagency task force to help promote data center development in the US and initiatives to support accelerated permitting for those facilities. The steps are aimed at ensuring that the US retains its leadership in AI, where rapid advances require significant investments in data centers and energy supply.
The US Department of Energy would also steer data center owners and operators toward resources such as loans, grants and tax credits that can help them find clean and reliable power sources, the White House statement said.
OpenAI, for example, plans to spend tens of billions of US dollars on a domestic AI infrastructure push that spans data centers, energy capacity and transmission, and semiconductor manufacturing — with investment from around the globe. Company executives have been meeting with government officials for months about a range of issues related to the initiative, including national security concerns that could be associated with foreign capital.
The discussions took place the same day that OpenAI announced a new AI model known internally as “Strawberry” that can perform some human-like reasoning tasks, a step that signaled the intensity of the competition.
“OpenAI believes infrastructure is destiny and that building additional infrastructure in the US is critical to the country’s industrial policy and economic future,” OpenAI said on Thursday.
Porat said robust US energy infrastructure was crucial to ensuring US leadership in AI.
“Today’s White House convening was an important opportunity to advance the work required to modernize and expand the capacity of America’s energy grid,” she said.
The AI-fueled surge in US data center construction coincides with a broader manufacturing boost spurred by the Chips and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — the signature subsidy programs for semiconductors and clean energy enacted in 2022 under US President Joe Biden.
Those investments, along with data center expansion and other factors, are expected to drive electricity demand up by 15 percent to 20 percent over the next decade, the US Department of Energy said.
Data centers could consume as much as 9 percent of US electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4 percent of total load last year, an Electric Power Research Institute report said in May.
The Biden administration has said renewables such as wind and solar, as well as battery storage and energy efficiency gains, are some of the best ways to meet growing data center energy demand, because they are rapidly scalable and cost-competitive.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
PRECEDENTED TIMES: In news that surely does not shock, AI and tech exports drove a banner for exports last year as Taiwan’s economic growth experienced a flood tide Taiwan’s exports delivered a blockbuster finish to last year with last month’s shipments rising at the second-highest pace on record as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and advanced computing remained strong, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Exports surged 43.4 percent from a year earlier to US$62.48 billion last month, extending growth to 26 consecutive months. Imports climbed 14.9 percent to US$43.04 billion, the second-highest monthly level historically, resulting in a trade surplus of US$19.43 billion — more than double that of the year before. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) described the performance as “surprisingly outstanding,” forecasting export growth
RSS