Five Things to Know About AI’s Thirst for Energy

Power demand from data centers is soaring as artificial intelligence grows more advanced. Here’s how to make sense of it all.

By Jennifer Hiller | Wall Street Journal | Feb 1, 2025

The race for AI dominance launched a stampede to connect to America’s vast electric grid. Plugging in, however, is likely to be easier said than done.

Tech companies and data-center providers want city-sized amounts of power as soon as possible. That’s upending the business of utilities, power producers and grid planners, who had been living in a world of nearly flat electricity demand for roughly two decades.

Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s recent release of an AI model raised questions about just how much computing power and electricity will be needed for AI. DeepSeek appears to perform on par with a cutting-edge counterpart from OpenAI, but needed far less computing power to develop. 

Full article published here: WSJ