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Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ US data-center freeze pushes the next AI buildout offshore; the US becomes a net token importer E296 · 2026-11-07 ▶ 1:29:29

J Cal, you're right that if the US doesn't build the data centers, they'll get built in other countries and we'll be paying to import the tokens.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ Power is the AI moat: get long energy and the owners of powered land E296 · 2026-11-07 ▶ 1:21:22

The dollar cost per megawatt per month is going to go through the roof. The dollar cost of a GPU hour is going to go through the roof. And the people that will be willing to pay the premium are going to be the ginormous companies with huge balance sheets.

Jason support ×3 ▼ on 🏛️ US data-center freeze pushes the next AI buildout offshore; the US becomes a net token importer E296 · 2026-11-07 ▶ 1:12:48

So offshore data centers will be the trend of the next two years. That's what you're going to see and desktop usage of local models. I'll just make that prediction here.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ Power is the AI moat: get long energy and the owners of powered land E295 · 2026-10-30 ▶ 19:02

Basically, the takeaway from all of this is, I think, Anth is emblematic of the entire AI complex, which is to say, it's all about datacenters, which means it's all about power.

you talk to Jensen, he can't give you chips till 2028 He talked to, where do you get land power and shell? So it's very hard to go say, yes, I can go build my own data centers, but it's kind of an empty threat.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ Power is the AI moat: get long energy and the owners of powered land E293 · 2026-10-17 ▶ 45:27

but I'm telling you guys, you got to get long energy. I think startups need to find a way of like cobbling together. If you don't have access to electricity, you cannot go through the hyperscalers, is my prognostication.

Yeah, such a disaster. I very much agree with that last one. Yeah, I think that's right.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:30:13

This generation's Manhattan and Apollo Project is energy production scaling in the United States. That's it. All the other shit flows.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:26:59

Yeah, look at the number of times that Elon has said this. Like it's like the amount of energy that's available if we just harness it from the sun and redirect it with some storage, would solve all of our problems. But the problem is that we're at like just a little over a terawatt. We're inching along in gigawatts, whereas China is in the terawatts, adding terawatts.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:24:47

The thing I do watch the most, Sacks, and that I do think, you and I have talked about this, that I do think is the critical linchpin for all of those other points of abundance being unleashed is the energy equation.

Sacks support ×1 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E229 · 2025-05-24 ▶ 1:23:08

Well, I agree that you need to build out power, but I think the administration is committed to doing that. Drill baby, drill.

Ben Shapiro support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E228 · 2025-05-17 ▶ 1:13:02

because we are rapidly scaling with regard to our own energy production. You have to be an energy intensive nation in order to produce AI. And so the United States has to play this game.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E226 · 2025-05-02 ▶ 1:21:17

And you see that on the power side, right? You're going from 100 megawatt datacenters to 300 megawatts to, we're just starting to now see the first gigawatt power datacenters. I don't even think they're live yet, but this is where they're trying to get to. And I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that we could be at five or 10 gigawatt datacenters in the next, I don't know, several years.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E222 · 2025-04-05 ▶ 1:18:01

But then underneath that AI thing, we have these two very complicated problems. One is a meaningful energy problem. I've been talking about this now incessantly. We don't have enough electrons. We just don't.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E218 · 2025-03-08 ▶ 28:07

We know that AI needs a tremendous amount of power. And whatever you thought you knew, actually, you had to re-underwrite because what Elon has shown is actually you need to now create these mega clusters, 100,000 GPUs going to a million GPUs. All of the power forecasting that we have is miscast. It doesn't even account for this, number one. Number two, there are 35,000 applications into FERC to get approved to generate electricity. 35,000, that's going to meander through some administrative rigmarole. There is a five-year delay to get a gas turbine into America and online.

Sacks support ×1 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E215 · 2025-02-15 ▶ 27:58

We have to win some of these key building block technologies, we want to win in chips, we want to win in AI models, we want to win in applications. He said we need to build, we need to unlock energy for these companies.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E213 · 2025-01-31 ▶ 1:32:48

That's super interesting, Travis. That's like, it's almost like the idea that we all talk about today is data centers and data centers need their own power substations.

Travis Kalanick support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E213 · 2025-01-31 ▶ 1:25:20

But then there's like this dark horse that nobody's talking about, which is, it's called electricity, it's called power. And all these vehicles are electric vehicles. And if you said, yeah, I just did some like quick back of the envelope calcs, if all of the miles in California went EV ride sharing, you would need to double the energy capacity of California.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E212 · 2025-01-25 ▶ 1:27:42

But just today it looked like President Trump overturned it and now it's full seam ahead. If you have it permitted, then it's all about just get the power, however you need the power, which I think is the smart decision. Back to your earlier point, we are in a race here.

If you think of the GPU as the atomic unit of the future, right, and the key competitive advantage and the key kind of ingredient, you can't power a GPU without a data center, and you can't use a data center without power. So I do think at the end of the day, it really comes down to the grid and it comes down to power. So I think that's kind of constraint number one.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E212 · 2025-01-25 ▶ 56:37

which is energy, electricity capacity buildout in the United States because it's critical. Building AI infrastructure means that we need to build energy infrastructure.

Gavin Baker support ×2 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E206 · 2024-12-07 ▶ 16:13

I mean, more nuclear, more better

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E206 · 2024-12-07 ▶ 14:37

But for me, it has to be such a priority that we accelerate a nuclear energy rollout in the United States, because that's what China is doing

Chamath oppose ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E200 · 2024-10-18 ▶ 1:04:44

I think by the time that you are rate-limited by energy, you'll have a plethora of solutions.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on ⚡ AI datacenter demand needs double-to-triple current US electricity generation E200 · 2024-10-18 ▶ 48:57

there is no way to meet the energy demand without nuclear