2024: The Year Big Tech Got into the Energy Game 

The generative AI craze may have kicked off two years ago, but it wasn’t until this year that tech giants realized if they’re going to stay in the game, they need a hookup.

Big Tech companies poured billions into energy infrastructure and server farms this year to support their AI ambitions. Generative AI sucks up a heck of a lot of power to both build and run, and the race is on to capture future capacity. Whether the grid can cope with that much demand is a whole other question.

The Nuclear Option

Tech’s energy fervor had considerable knock-on effects for broader energy markets as tech companies raced to capture future energy capacity, plus Big Tech busily lobbied to alter the way carbon accounting works.

Every energy sector felt Big Tech come calling. The AI energy gold-rush gave the US coal industry a lift, but Big Tech also signed off on big renewable projects like wind farms. The biggest difference, however, has been felt by the nuclear industry:

• Companies including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all signed big nuclear power deals this year. One of the deals struck by Microsoft is slated to re-open the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the site of an infamous partial meltdown in 1979.
• Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have had skin in the nuclear game for a little while already, as they are both involved in nuclear power startups. Altman has even backed nuclear fusion as a way to fuel the AI revolution he envisions — though fusion is a long way from being a commercially viable reality. 

Time Constraints: The issue is whether these energy projects will outlast Silicon Valley enthusiasm for generative AI. This year saw AI companies including OpenAI and Google run into some technological speed-bumps. Improving AI products is getting harder, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said this month that progress will get harder next year because the “low-hanging fruit is gone” and now the “hill is steeper.” Not only is building nuclear energy plants a slow process, such projects have a history of running over both time and budget targets. By the time Three Mile Island is up and running again, who knows what the hot new tech trend will be. Maybe the metaverse is due for a comeback…