Data Center

• Major companies—Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI, and xAI—signed a federal pledge to provide their own electricity for AI data centers, shielding U.S. consumers from grid overload. • The commitment responds to exploding energy needs from AI infrastructure, following Meta's Louisiana gas plant initiative and similar efforts nationwide. • Industry leaders aim to prevent rate hikes and blackouts while fueling the AI boom central to U.S. tech competitiveness.

• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Wednesday to pause new data centers in the United States until national safeguards are established for worker protection, consumer safety, and environmental impact. • A typical AI-focused data center consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households, contributing to record U.S. electricity consumption hit in 2024 that is expected to continue rising as data centers expand. • The bill is unlikely to advance in either chamber but signals deep progressive concerns about AI infrastructure's rapid expansion and its effects on working families, democracy, and technology equity.

• ARM unveiled its first proprietary AGI CPU for AI data centers, shifting from licensing designs to manufacturing its own silicon. • Early adopters include Meta, OpenAI, Cloudflare, and Cerebras, positioning ARM directly in the AI infrastructure market. • This move underscores the intensifying competition in AI hardware, where control over end-to-end production is becoming critical for major players.

Lawmakers say moratorium on construction would buy time to create strong, federal guardrails for AIAmid an unprecedented energy crisis and the rapid buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure, progressive lawmakers have unveiled a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of AI datacenters.The policy, announced by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic representative, on Wednesday morning, aims to ensure the AI boom protects the environment and communities, and benefits workers instead of harming them. A temporary ban, the lawmakers say, would give the US government time to create strong federal safeguards for AI, which is “affecting everything from our economy and wellbeing to our democracy, warfare and our kids’ education”. Continue reading...

• Baker Hughes announced a collaboration with Google Cloud on March 24, 2026, to develop AI-enabled power optimization and sustainability solutions for data centers. • The Houston-based initiative targets efficiency in high-demand AI computing environments using advanced cloud technology. • This partnership addresses growing energy challenges in U.S. data centers powering AI workloads.

• The United States hosts nearly 5,500 data centers and accounts for three-quarters of the world's computing power as of May 2025, providing a substantial advantage over China in the global AI race according to EpochAI research. • America's semiconductor superiority remains the primary AI advantage, with Nvidia chips significantly outperforming China's most powerful Huawei-produced chips in both processing power and bandwidth memory, and the performance gap will increase substantially in coming years. • ByteDance plans to invest $23 billion this year on AI infrastructure including chips, while US companies are coordinating with the White House to secure additional grid capacity for data centers to prevent consumer price hikes.

• The Trump administration has granted Silicon Valley-based nuclear companies expedited pathways to test experimental reactor designs, with the DOE creating a new program and assigning concierge teams to help companies navigate bureaucracy. • About a dozen advanced reactor companies are currently planning to participate, with the administration targeting some reactors to achieve "critical" status—a key milestone toward functioning power plants—by July 2026. • The DOE quietly overhauled safety rules for new reactors and shared the revised regulations with companies before making them public, addressing long-standing complaints that companies lack opportunities to experiment.