Please welcome to the stage Axios National Energy Correspondent Amy Harter.
Hello everyone. How are you doing? Happy New York Climate Week. Isn't it lovely that we can look out at the park? I think that's great. A huge thank you to Axios and all my colleagues for pulling off such an incredible event. Well, you might have heard that there's a little bit of an energy demand happening here with a little thing called artificial intelligence. It became such a big deal so fast, we don't even say artificial intelligence, we just say AI. And we're about to bring on stage one of the women that knows more about this topic when it comes to sustainability and related topics more than anyone else. So, please without further ado, welcome to the stage Cara Hurst, the chief sustainability officer at Amazon.
Hello Cara, thanks so much for being here.
Well, we are going to talk about AI and other demands on energy. But first, I want to talk about something a little bit more related to climate and the environment, which I understand you're announcing today. So, breaking news, everybody. Amazon is announcing today that you're putting $20 million toward projects to help communities grapple with the water crisis in the Colorado River. Something near and dear to most of the western states. So, it's incredibly important. And you're looking to mobilize a total of a hundred million. Now, those are big dollar signs. I would like that much money. I'm sure most of us would. But for context, for a problem this big, it may not be as large as, for example, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation's conservation program for this problem is $1 billion. So, Cara, can you help us understand? Yes, these are big numbers, but in the big context of this problem, is it going to be enough to move the needle?
Well, I think there's two things at play. One, we're really excited about this project because we're putting the money forward. Amazon's contributing $20 million to the watershed, and this is, you know, if you live in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, this is your tap. And this is an area which has been, you know, having devastating drought for, I think, going on 30 years. And it's just an area where incredibly important watershed for many, many, many people. I think it's up to 30 million people rely on this watershed, critical ecological area to preserve. But more than the dollars, which are important to see Amazon and many other companies mobilizing these private sector dollars towards this issue, is the fact that the money is going to work right away. And so we're putting in 20 million. We've already mobilized a total of 32 million. 100 million over two years is the goal, but we're looking to get this money into action immediately. So, we already have projects identified. The money will be working immediately. And I think that's what the private sector can do is get to work right away. So, this won't be kind of a drawn out process where, you know, we're mobilizing the money and then we have to go through some procedural thing and then, you know, eventually we'll get to work. Work is already happening. Projects are already identified, and we want to take action on this right away. And I think we're looking — if that's not, you know, that's a good goal. Always more dollars are needed, so anyone in the room is welcome to join. And certainly more capital is needed for a lot of these watersheds around the world where water is a critical issue.
Is this tied to Amazon's footprint in the region or is it essentially corporate philanthropy?
It's both. But we have operations in general. You know, we live and work and operate in so many communities around the United States. We certainly have operations there. You know, we deliver there, we work there. We have communities that are critical to us, employees, all of that. So, yeah, for the health of our operations and our people. And just the health of, you know, being a company that operates in the United States, it's a critical watershed for all of us.
Raise your hand if you live in one of the seven states affected by the river or if you've ever visited so everybody can throw up. That was kind of a trick question. I want to stay on water but move beyond the river. One of the biggest reasons that communities are opposed to data centers is their water use. Now I know companies like yours have emphasized that other industries, maybe golf courses, use more water than data centers. But nonetheless, the problem still feels very acute for these communities and to one community it might feel like too much. So what tangible things is Amazon not only doing for yourself but also calling on state and local, even federal governments to help respond to this concern in a way that could satisfy these lingering worries?
Yeah. Well, one, I really appreciate you bringing up water because I think, you know, I heard we talked about energy before which has been the focus. Water is such a critical issue and communities are right to raise it. It's a very local issue. So I live in Seattle in the Pacific Northwest and so, you know, that's a different kind of water issue. We have a lot of water. But, you know, in so many areas, in water constrained areas around the world, people — and it's a critical issue and I think that people should raise it, are right to raise it, and a right to demand accountability and transparency from companies that are taking water from where they live. So, we've done a number of different things. We set a goal for our Amazon Web Services business to be water positive by 2030. We're 75% of the way there. What that means is we're doing water replenishment projects around the world. We have 65 of those projects already underway. We have water technologies that we're working on. So, what that means is we're using technologies like AI to work with local municipalities on leak detection so that we can conserve water. So when you think about it, it's reducing the amount of water that you use. I want to say that 90% of the time in our data center operations, we're not using water to cool.
Do you think — I understand in Texas, you recently said that you support state level reporting, facility level reporting of actual water withdrawals and consumption? Is that something you would like to see across the country?
Yeah, I think water use efficiency standards are really important. We published a WOWE, which is water use effectiveness standard. On our average, we're seven times more efficient than the industry average.
But you would like to see that disclosure across the country.
Standards and disclosure are important. Absolutely. And I think, you know, having metrics that people can compare, standards that, you know, people have to publish. Very important. Again, accountability and transparency are part of this solution. Also we want to publish information about what does it look like to reduce your water usage. What are these new technologies? How do you scale them and get them to be cost-effective? How do you reduce the water you're using? How do you replenish where needed? And how do you, you know, incorporate the community in this decision-making? All of this very, very important. The technologies are out there. They need to be cost-effective. We need to scale them. We need to engage communities in these conversations. And I think, you know, this is a solvable issue. It's a matter of some capital. It's a matter of consistency. We put a lot of information out on our sustainability exchange. We do a lot of partnership with organizations like water.org. We do partnerships with municipalities and we're always surfacing new technologies in partnerships with local governments and municipalities. We also invest in things like the purple pipes. We leave it better than we found it when we go in and invest in the municipal infrastructure where we're operating. So very, very important that a lot of those stories get told and we talk about what's happening in these communities.
It is New York Climate Week after all. So I'm going to shift to climate explicitly. So Amazon, you've recently announced — well, excuse me, you've committed to net zero by 2040. Yet you are also backing a Texas data center campus that could be powered by more than 7 gigawatts of natural gas, which would be one of the biggest natural gas plants in the country. How do you reconcile your climate goal with that type of investment?
I think overall when you look at our clean energy portfolio and you look at what we're doing, we have been one of the largest clean energy purchasers of energy in the world for the last several years running. So we have a carbon-free energy portfolio of about 42 gigawatts of energy. So we are investing heavily in clean energy and we are looking — you know, we have a business to run and need to run energy. So for in Texas we are also looking at solar and we're looking at battery storage for that facility. We will procure clean energy where and whenever possible and so we will continue to invest in clean energy and we will continue to grow our business. So it is a balance and it is, you know, kind of a broader portfolio.
Do you think you can stay committed to that net zero goal by 2040 with investments?
We are still committed to our climate pledge. We are still striving towards that target. We are a large company that's going to take that effort to decarbonize all of our operations. So that includes for us carbon-free energy procurement. It includes decarbonization of our fleet operations, which is electrification of our fleet. It includes product innovation, so new materials of the products we produce. Innovations like we just talked about includes water strategies. So, it's a huge effort across the company to get to that. And the way that, you know, we're thinking about it right now because obviously we made that goal in 2019 and we made it as a pledge to invite other companies in because we cannot go at this alone. We need heavy industrial industries, cement, steel, built environment, ocean freight, all of that to commit with us. We have 700 companies now committed to the climate pledge, which is fantastic across a variety of industries. And we need all of those industries moving in tandem. We need our suppliers moving with us. This is not something we can do alone. And so when you think about that, we made that in 2019. Then we hit a global pandemic and our business almost doubled in size. Then we hit a supply chain crisis. Now we're hitting AI. So there is always something that is going to change our ability, how we think about that goal, potentially our ability to meet it. And I'm not going to, you know, sit here and say we know how all the ways that we're going to do this and it's going to be an easy linear path. It is not. It is challenging. But we are going to do everything we can to strive to go at that timeline with speed and with intention and to hit it. And we have reduced our carbon intensity a great deal over the years that we've made that commitment. So, it is working internally in the things that we're doing. We have 55,000 electric delivery vans on the road that we didn't have in 2019 because of that goal. So, things are moving at pace.
So, of course, Amazon's not the only tech company investing in natural gas. In fact, all of them are, Microsoft and Google included. Have you looked into carbon capture for this plan? Looking at all the strategies.
So, we're going to hear from Shaw, an energy expert who probably needs a little introduction in this crowd in a little while. And he told me recently that this natural gas plant of yours was, quote, ridiculous and not needed, end quote. And if you know him, you can see that he would say something like that. And his reasoning was that electricity prices — he was actually focused on prices will actually be lower by building smaller data centers and finding grid connected power. Now this plant, I understand, is going to be initially not connected to the grid. What's your response to Shaw?
I think we are, again, we are looking at all possibilities. So we are building data centers to grow our business. Look, the grid in the United States needs a lot of work. We know this around the world, right? We need a more stable, more reliable grid. And so we are also investing in grid reliability. We're working with utilities where we build all over the place. And we will continue to invest in grid reliability projects and we'll continue to invest in carbon-free energy.
I want to bring up a couple of the conversations we had this morning. As well, we heard from Josh Parker, head of sustainability at Nvidia, and he said that he was giving a shout out to companies like yours, saying that you're responsible for 75% of the clean energy, clean electricity in this country. And then later, Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat, he criticized the Trump administration for holding up wind power in particular. You may have read about the military holding up some wind farm reviews. Has, to the degree you know about that, Cara, has that delay impacted any of the projects Amazon is looking to pursue?
I think in general we know that there is a backlog of projects and there is a queue of projects in the United States and so there are some things that we could do to accelerate that including, you know, some of the permitting reform that could happen.
On that note, Senator Schatz said that we're really close to permitting reform. So, you know, I think I could be rich if you got a dime every time somebody said that. But Cara, are you or obviously other folks on your team actively pushing for that?
And a key part of that though is the administration's animosity toward renewable energy. What's your general position on that position?
We have a lot of conversations in the administration. We have a lot of common ground, you know, on things like nuclear and on things like grid reliability. So a lot of conversations and on permitting reform. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of common ground about how to move things forward. I'm a proponent of saying there's always common ground to find ways to move things forward. And so, we're doing everything that we can to continue to move that forward day by day. Again, we have not stopped moving things forward. We have over 700 carbon-free energy projects around the world and we're continuing to move at a pace every single day, every single year.
In our final moments, we're going to transition to a concluding game of would you rather.
Okay. Would you rather live without air conditioning or without AI?
I would say without air conditioning because I don't mind the heat personally.
Nice. Would you rather have every package delivered by drone but have some fall at random into the closest body of water, which if you've been reading the news has been happening with some of the Amazon drones, or you have to go to the nearest post office every time you get a package?
I guess I would rather have them delivered by drone.
And hope it's waterproof. I guess maybe Amazon can make waterproof packaging.
Yeah, I haven't heard that and I would imagine our technology improves exponentially every day.
Yes. Would you rather always know when someone is lying or when AI is wrong?
Oh, I would rather know when someone — I have kids, so I'd rather know when someone's lying.
And the final one, would you rather see planet Earth before humans or 500 years from now?
Wow. I'd rather see it 500 years from now. I love looking in the future.
Well, with that, we want to thank you, Cara, for this conversation.
Hello everyone. Thank you Amy. I'm Nicholas Johnson. I'm the publisher of Axios. Thank you so much for joining us here at Axios's house in the midst of a ton of awesome programming that we're having during climate week this year. This is our third or fourth year back. Bigger and better every year. So we're grateful for you all joining us. Also hugely grateful to all of our partners. Nothing we do at Axios is possible without the support of our partners. The investments in journalism we make all around the country convening awesome conversations like this. So huge thanks to GE Vernova for making today's conversations possible. And I'm very excited to welcome to the stage for a view from the top conversation CEO of power at GE Vernova, Eric Gray. Eric, welcome to Axios's house.
How are you, sir?
Let's start big picture. Like hanging over every conversation I feel like in town this week are the massive demands for power driven by AI, driven by advanced manufacturing. You're a huge player in power generation, both nuclear and gas. From your vantage point, what are the trends you're seeing? What are the drivers you're seeing? And how do you approach balancing sustainability and climate goals?
No, that's a great question. And to start, I do think that we're entering into a brand new era here when it comes to energy demand. If you look at it, especially here in markets like the US, we've lived through several decades of relatively flat demand. But now we believe that we're truly entering into an infrastructure super cycle. While data centers are absolutely driving a significant piece of the demand, the AI story really isn't it. It's really advanced manufacturing. It's industrialization, electrification of buildings, the transportation industry. And when you think about it and you look at just kind of economic growth, all of that has resilient demand tied to it. I think even if we were to see the AI trajectory drop off — and it's not that I believe that that's going to happen — we really believe that this demand is going to be durable today and into the future. And if you look at where economies are going to thrive and really be prosperous, it's going to be in those areas where you have reliable and affordable energy because that's where the investment is going to go. That's where the factories are going to be built and really that's where the jobs are going to be created.
And so your vantage point, like it's like take that step back. It's not just an AI story. It's an almost re-industrialization, re-electrification of entire economies story. When we talk about gas, I know when GE Vernova talks about it, I mean it's a way of both meeting demand but there's a sustainability component you think about as well. Walk us through how you think about that.
So I think first and foremost when you think about the most practical way to serve the world's energy needs today, that's through gas deployment. It's scalable, it's affordable, it's reliable, and therefore we believe that it's not necessarily a competition between electrification or decarbonization. We actually think that with today's super cycle and all the demand that we're seeing, it really gives us the opportunity that we needed to continue to invest in things like post-combustion carbon capture, like direct air capture. So honestly, it's not necessarily gas versus sustainability. We view them as being very complementary and that's why today we're really focused on electrifying and then tomorrow we'll work to decarbonize with all the investments that we're making today.
I mean there's an element also of these demands are coming now, right? And so like what are the strategies you can employ to meet us where the market is at this moment as you think longer term as well.
So I definitely think, as I mentioned, post-combustion carbon capture, direct air capture, but definitely SMR in our nuclear program. So when you think about the amount of interest there is today in the nuclear sector, the amount of investment and really the strong policies that are being deployed for nuclear across the world, that really gives us the opportunity that we needed to continue to invest in our SMR program. And without the demand that we're seeing today, things like that just necessarily wouldn't happen in order to make that level of investment.
I want to go deeper on nuclear and SMRs. Like there's a trilemma in all of energy between cost, reliability and sustainability and nuclear historically is very capital intensive. How do you see the future of that playing out particularly around SMR?
So definitely it starts with we believe that nuclear has a strong position in our future. 24/7 dispatchable carbon-free power. With the amount of generation that's being demanded of us today, it's hard not to see the value in having that nuclear product. But it absolutely starts with execution, right? And today we're executing our first BWRX-300 with Ontario Power Generation.
You're getting on a plane, I think, tomorrow, later this week to go see that in the real world.
So, it's pretty exciting. So, we broke ground a little bit over a year ago on our first SMR deployment. Earlier this year we set the base mat. The base mat is really the floor level for where the reactor vessel is going to sit. We're starting to construct the first level. That's level one of eight. So progress is going well. It's exciting to see the first nuclear project in the western world in many decades really be launched, right? And everyone's watching because that project has to be successful in order to make our product real because from the Darlington project where we really want to go is into reapplicability versus reinvesting in something new.
Yeah. So the only way to make SMR deployment scalable is really to take the product that we have today, invest in a very scalable supply chain where we can do more of the work offsite in factories and then provide our customers a reliable delivery schedule that they can bank on because that's really the only way that you're going to get these projects financed. So our belief is we'll take the SMR and truly put the M, the modularity, into it to make this all very real.
What should we be watching for in this product or project? Like what are milestones that are coming? What is next on the horizon that we should — that I guess would make you excited to see like this is really starting to click?
Yeah, I think unfortunately those are more so milestones that OPG will announce. For us it's really the endgame and it's when we start generating electrons. So as of right now that plant should go COD sometime the end of 2030 and for us while we've got all of our construction milestones that we very clearly laid out, that's the one that OPG has shared with the external world and really that's the one that counts when the electrons actually hit the grid and start powering homes and factories and everything else.
Let's keep looking into the future. I want to come back to gas. There's lots of conversation about the longevity of gas. Like what is the outyear forecast of that? What is your view of how gas stays relevant and why it stays relevant in the future?
So I would say we are unapologetic about our support for gas. As a matter of fact, almost a decade ago now, we penned a white paper that basically said we should invest in renewables as quickly and affordably as possible. So for a gas business that may have seemed a little odd, but the reality is that we all recognize that gas provides that dispatchable energy, that grid resilience that allows for more renewables to come onto the grid. Yeah. So I think from our perspective is we should continue to deploy renewables as quickly as possible, but you need that dispatchable backbone for any grid to remain reliable, right?
It's like — I cover a lot of energy politics. It's like that all of the above. You have to sample from all of these possible technologies to meet the demands.
In the future, we're about to get the hook here, but I want to keep looking at the future. I'm not going to give you crazy questions like Amy gave Cara before. I wanted the wrapped Amazon packages so they didn't get wet. Just to be clear, if you look 20 to 30 years in the future in your crystal ball, like what are the technologies or the breakthroughs that you see coming? What gets you excited? What makes you confident that we'll meet this moment and solve the demands in the future?
You know, I think the reality is that it's not really going to be one breakthrough. If you look at history and if that's taught us anything, you know, periods of great innovation typically follow after super cycles like the one we're in today. And that's really where we're looking forward to the future. The reality is we'll need breakthroughs in generation, decarbonization, and grid. So that's where the BWRX SMR product fits nicely in terms of the generation that we're going to need. Our focus around post-combustion carbon capture and direct air capture helps decarbonize gas that's going on the grid today. But then there's technologies that we're not really talking a lot about and that's around the grid. So that's software and automation control for the grid to more reliably move the electrons around. That's solid state transformers. That's incremental software that we'll deploy to our customers that gives their operators better visibility in terms of how they're creating the electron all the way through deploying it to the point of use. So if you think about it, it's all the reason why GE Vernova today is investing approximately 11 billion on R&D and capex through 2028 to really deliver more of what the market requires today, but also deliver on those products and the innovation that our customers are going to need.
And not necessarily big flashy things. What you're talking about is like massive investments that go into almost the guts of all these systems that will lead to this future that's much more reliable.
If you think about what it takes to create flow and then deliver the electron. It's a system of systems and all of those have to work and orchestrate nicely in order for the end customer to get what they need reliably, affordably and sustainably.
All right, something to look forward to. Eric, thanks so much for being here today. Huge thanks to GE Vernova for making this possible. Amy Harter is going to be back to keep the conversation going.
Hello everyone. Are you ready for some more of my crazy questions? As Nick just said, I hope my next guest is. Well, we are going to unpack — we've already been talking a lot about the sheer amount of energy demand that's coming from AI. And our next guest is an entrepreneur who's really trying to find flexible ways to make use of that power so it's better for everyone. So with that, please welcome to the stage Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI.
Great to see you, Varun.
I think the last time we chatted it was January. It was a little chillier. We were across the pond in Davos. I was wearing shoes that were a little bit more covering of my ankles and we were in Davos and it seems like that was yesterday but so much has happened since then and what I like to do for audiences is try to connect the dots between how much change is happening throughout the year. So Varun, what are the three biggest things that have changed since we talked in Davos in the AI boom in general?
Look, it was such a pleasure to be at Axios's house in Davos and some things have stayed the same or intensified and some trends are new. You know, first you asked me in Davos, hey, is this AI thing a bubble? And I said at the time, I really don't think it's a bubble when you have intelligence that is as or better than humans at virtually every task we can conceive. There will not be enough demand for that. I think that trend is intensified. There's demand for compute. It's not a bubble. Second, the trend that's intensified is energy is the bottleneck. United States wants to connect 70 gigawatts of AI data centers between now and 2028. Will only succeed in connecting 30. Let's say it's still the bottleneck for American competitiveness, American innovation. The third thing is, has something really changed? If I had to pick one thing, it's the political backlash against data centers, AI data centers. Over the last week, there's been a safety phenomenon. And so that's the topic that I think really has motivated us to double down on why AI data centers need to be good citizens. Good citizens to power grids, good citizens to local communities.
So you talk about wanting to be a good citizen, a good citizen, and you launched a new coalition which we talked about earlier with Josh Parker from Nvidia, but it's pretty wonky. I think it's called the AI Energy Management Alliance. There's a lot of alliances in Washington DC. People are laughing because this seems to be one every day. Why is this one different according to you and how will it actually solve the problem of community opposition?
Well, I'm really proud of this new alliance. Thank you, by the way, for breaking the story. This alliance brings together Emerald AI, my company, which I founded along with Google and Nvidia, and we brought 20 companies, Anthropic on the AI side, on the energy side, AES, Constellation, NRG, National Grid, energy giants. We brought the whole AI and energy ecosystem together for one very specific thing. Power flexible AI data center. Sounds wonky, right? Super wonky. Making a data center that can control its power or reduce it during the moment when the grid is most stressed out. That moment, the hot summer day in Phoenix, Arizona, or the
moment at halftime of a soccer game in England when everyone turns on their tea kettle in the kitchen. Those moments, if you can reduce your power at the data center, mean you can fit far more data centers onto the existing grid. What's really important is if you do that and you're a good citizen, you end up creating these societal benefits. You keep rates affordable for local citizens and local communities, you keep grids reliable so that they don't crash when lightning hits a substation. If the data center is a good citizen and can control its power, as we've proven many times in six different demonstrations with Nvidia, if you can do this, you actually can have everything at the same time. So the alliance is supporting a grand bargain. The grand bargain is regulators, governors, elected officials in America and elsewhere, they can offer faster and larger power access to the grid for data centers because if they're flexible, you don't need to build out so much new infrastructure. And in return, data centers that are good citizens are going to help to protect customer rates and keep grids reliable. That's the grand bargain. Massive societal impact for one very narrow, wonky topic, flexible AI data centers.
But embedded in that is this idea that people will connect to the grid. We just heard from Cara Hurst from Amazon. They're building this massive natural gas plant along with some solar that's actually behind the meter. It's not connected to the grid. Do you think Amazon's making a mistake?
Look, there are two potential futures ahead of us. I want to be clear about how stark the choice is, Amy. One potential future is where AI data centers, the AI industry says, "My goodness, it's so hard to connect to the grid. They make me wait more than 10 years and I have to understand all these crazy regulations. I'm just going to go off the grid." Intuitively, that sounds like a good idea, right? Or I might even go into space with Elon Musk. And don't laugh. This is serious. It's a serious technology. It's going to do well. That's bad for everybody in my opinion, right? It's bad, frankly, for the AI companies because it's expensive to run your own private utility. It's more expensive tokens of artificial intelligence. It's bad for the public power sector. You've suddenly raised the prices of all the inputs, the turbines and the switch gear that the public power system needs. And most importantly, you've taken away the biggest driver of American economic growth from the public power system, from the utilities, and from our local communities. We should want these data centers on our power systems, but they should be good grid citizens. Citizens that are able to respond to when the system is stressed out, able to help fund the improvements. Local communities need these data centers if they're also going to fund the upgrades that are going to bring on hospitals and advanced manufacturing plants and neighborhood growth. That integrated future, that second future, that's the one we're pushing towards because the first one, the first one doesn't help anybody at all.
So, is Amazon making a mistake?
Look, I'm a huge, huge fan of Amazon. Amazon's been a longtime leader in the AI and in the data center space. And I think all of us would benefit from learning how they run data centers so well. Going forward, I'm really proud of this alliance, Nvidia, Google, Emerald, Anthropic, for what we're doing on making data centers good grid citizens for the 21st century.
Have you approached Amazon about joining that?
I'm a huge fan. You know, Cara Hurst, who you just had, Cara was actually one of the founding members of the First Movers Coalition, which I spearheaded along with Secretary John Kerry and the World Economic Forum. I think that Cara, through many of her sustainability initiatives, has really been a leader. Huge fan of Cara.
So, it sounds like stay tuned if Amazon is going to join.
I'd love for Amazon to join us. It would be fantastic.
That's an open invitation. I'll go ahead and ask her after this.
So I want to hear a little bit more about Emerald AI, your company. You've gone from a startup to a billion-dollar unicorn in barely a year. What's the assumption embedded in that valuation that worries you the most?
Well, look, today, Amy, is a super special day for us. Two years ago to the day was when I went to investment committee for our founding investor, Radical Ventures. I think my co-founder Rob Taves is somewhere here in this audience. And that was the day that they took a real bet on Emerald. And over the last two years, as you mentioned, we just became a unicorn. I'm really excited. And you asked, why do we deserve a valuation like that? I don't like to talk that much about why Emerald is so valuable. What I want to talk about is why Emerald unlocks trillions of dollars of value in the economy. Because there's 100 gigawatts of available power that we can fit data centers on our existing grid if they're just a little bit flexible. That's a massive number, right? That's 100 nuclear power plants. That's more data centers than we're trying to connect in the next three years. All of that you can connect overnight, not make the data centers wait 10 years while they're good citizens. Emerald enables the data centers to achieve that revenue. It's $10 million of profit for every megawatt that we get on the grid. We enable the utilities to keep paying customers. Don't get disintermediated. The utilities actually get great customers. You know, National Grid, who's one of our investors, we now have 12 Fortune 500 global investors in addition to Nvidia. National Grid says, "You're going to take data centers and convert them from this entity that I'm kind of scared to connect to an entity that I'd love to connect. I'm going to compete with other utilities to connect them because they're such good citizens." That's the value that we're seeking to unlock, $4 trillion.
So, what's stopping Google or Microsoft or Amazon from doing what you're doing, using AI, and then they won't need you anymore?
You know, first of all, Google has been a pioneer in this field. We're really big fans of what Google's done, and we've just tried to put together what the world's best team on AI power flexibility. The Emerald Conductor platform, it's our software. We use AI agents in these data centers. It's almost like a recursive meta AI for AI. These AIs are helping to make sure that the data center can reduce its power when it's really hot in Phoenix, let's say, as we published in the journal Nature Energy, while we protect the performance of the mission-critical AI workloads. That's really hard for a human to do, but our AI agents are actually able to do this. So, we are just pushing forward the scientific frontier on what's possible, connecting the energy system and the data centers. We hope that we'll get to work with all of these different partners. Nvidia has been an absolutely wonderful one. You know, we're later this year. You broke the story. Nvidia and Emerald are launching a 100-megawatt AI data center, the world's first truly power-flexible AI factory. It's going to be a community-friendly good grid citizen. I hope all of you will join us at the ribbon cutting.
So when I first reported that it was going to be the first half of 2026, it's now September 21st. What's up with the delay and when is the ribbon cutting?
Well, when you send out the save the date right now.
Well, when you first wrote about it, the picture you published in the scoop that you broke was a picture of dirt, right? There was nothing there. And ever since you've watched this building take shape with massive power infrastructure and GPUs, Vera Rubins that are being wheeled in.
It is a marvelous, it's, you know, it's an amazing exquisite machine. So yes, it is coming online second half of this year. Q4 is going to be the ribbon cutting. We're very, very excited. But what I want to emphasize here is this, you know, is coming online in 2026. It's a real proof point. And if you're a regulator, if you're a utility, and you're wondering, hey, can these AI data centers really be good grid citizens? I know they say they can. This whole alliance just got created with three of the world's 10 biggest companies, but will they really show up when I'm in a pinch and it's a hot summer day? The answer is yes, and you're going to see the real proof. This 100-megawatt facility is going to respond to whatever the grid needs it to do perfectly.
