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.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure