Google says U.S. faces a power capacity crisis in AI race against China
The U.S. is facing a power capacity crisis as the tech sector races against China to achieve dominance in artificial intelligence, an executive leading the energy strategy of Alphabet’s Google unit said this week.
The U.S. is facing a power capacity crisis as the tech sector races against China to achieve dominance in artificial intelligence, an executive leading the energy strategy of Alphabet’s Google unit said this week.
The emergence of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence firm sent the shares of major power companies tumbling in late January on speculation that its AI model is cheaper and more efficient. But Caroline Golin, Google’s global head of energy market development, said more power is needed now to keep up with Beijing.
“We are in a capacity crisis in this country right now, and we are in an AI race against China right now,” Golin told a conference hosted by the Nuclear Energy Institute in New York City on Tuesday.
Alphabet’s Google unit embarked four years ago on an ambitious goal to power its operations around the clock with carbon-free renewable energy, but the company faced a major obstacle that forced a turn toward nuclear power.
Google ran into a “very stark reality that we didn’t have enough capacity on the system to power our data centers in the short term and then potentially in the long term,” Golin said.
Rating: 5