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.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
Taipei is today suspending its US$2.5 trillion stock market as Super Typhoon Krathon approaches Taiwan with strong winds and heavy rain. The nation is not conducting securities, currency or fixed-income trading, statements from its stock and currency exchanges said. Yesterday, schools and offices were closed in several cities and counties in southern and eastern Taiwan, including in the key industrial port city of Kaohsiung. Taiwan, which started canceling flights, ship sailings and some train services earlier this week, has wind and rain advisories in place for much of the island. It regularly experiences typhoons, and in July shut offices and schools as
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
RSS