Claude maker Anthropic has signed an unprecedented $3.4 billion deal with a Texas-based energy company called OnePWR Solutions.
As the Financial Times reports, the deal will provide gas-fired engines to provide AI data centers with off-grid electricity. The AI industry is racing to secure enough power and related equipment for its incredibly resource-intensive — and massively hated — facilities, and the Dario Amodei-helmed company is looking to cut out the middle man.
Anthropic’s deal, per the FT, is the “largest known single purchase of power-generation equipment by an AI lab.” It isn’t just symptomatic of a desperate race to secure the necessary utilities: it’s also one of the clearest signs yet that the AI industry has turned its back on the growing climate crisis in favor of pollution-spewing gas generators it’s installing across the globe.
Researchers have found that the effects of AI on the environment are nothing short of devastating. And the prognosis for the future is grim. Last month, environmental nonprofit Sierra Club estimated that upcoming AI data centers could release 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, wiping out nearly 15 years worth of greenhouse gas reduction efforts.
After OnePWR’s attempts to acquire Caterpillar gas generators stalled thanks to a lack of funds, Anthropic decided to upgrade its client relationship to take over the Caterpillar orders itself as part of the latest deal.
The company’s competitors, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Google parent company Alphabet, have also bought energy developers and power equipment directly.
While analysts say Anthropic could be protecting itself from future energy equipment price swings as it prepares to go public, its deal with OnePWR once again highlights just how deep the relationship runs between dirty fossil fuels and frontier AI labs.
That reality is unlikely to win over the American public, which voted defiantly against data centers a mere week ago. Out of 41 data center-related ballot measures, only a single one swung in favor of the AI industry.
Beyond the staggering environmental damage, the facilities are also known to emit earsplitting noise pollution and raise local electricity prices, making them staggeringly unpopular.
More on data centers: New AI Data Center Is So Huge That It’ll Generate the Heat of 23 Atomic Bombs Every Single Day
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