By 2027, it could require as much energy to power AI per year as it currently does to keep the lights on in Sweden or the Netherlands.
As big tech companies like Meta and Google build out costly AI infrastructure, the CEO of AI chip maker Nvidia, the third-largest company in the world by market cap, says the answer to the world’s energy needs could be nuclear.
Related: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s Biggest Worry Shows that Success Has a Downside
“Nuclear is a wonderful way forward as one of the sources of energy, one of the sources of sustainable energy,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg on Friday. “It won’t be the only one. We’re going to need energy from all sources and balance the availability and the cost of energy as well as the sustainability over time.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Huang also told reporters that though AI will use more electricity, it will compensate for it with “incredible productivity.”
Huang’s remarks follow the news that Microsoft is reopening Three Mile Island, a nuclear station that has been closed for five years. Other AI leaders, like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have said that nuclear power is one solution to AI’s energy demands. Altman has even invested $375 million into Helion Energy, a startup working to build the world’s first nuclear fusion power plant.
Related: Will It Take Nuclear Power to Sustain AI? Microsoft Is Betting on It.
It’s undeniable that AI takes considerable energy to power. Google’s 2024 environmental report, released in July, showed a nearly 50% jump in emissions. Google attributed the bulk of the increase to energy needed for data centers and its supply chain.
“As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute,” Google stated in the report.
Nvidia holds between 70% and 95% of the AI chip market. Its four biggest clients, which comprise over 40% of its revenue, are Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
Nvidia’s market cap was $2.953 trillion at the time of writing.
