Bernard Looney, the former chief executive of BP, one of the world’s largest energy companies, said Sunday that he would become chairman of a data center start-up in the United States, a move that comes amid a ravenous appetite for electricity to power the boom in artificial intelligence.
The company, called Prometheus Hyperscale, plans to build a $10 billion data center on a 640-acre site in Evanston, Wyo., carved out of the family ranch of the company’s founder and chief executive, Trenton Thornock. The hope is to attract companies like Amazon, Microsoft or Google with mushrooming needs for computer power, Mr. Looney said in an interview.
Prometheus plans to expand in the United States and internationally, he added. “I’ll be helping them with customers,” he said. “I’ll be helping them with investors. I’ll be helping them with strategy.”
Mr.Looney, 54, left BP last year after acknowledging that he failed to properly disclose personal relationships with colleagues.
The oil and gas industry may seem far removed from a start-up aimed at serving the A.I. industry, but the two sectors have become increasingly intertwined.
The huge arrays of computers needed for A.I. require staggering, and rapidly increasing, amounts of energy to keep them humming. Energy companies like BP already view large data service providers, known as hyperscalers, as important buyers of their energy.
“Hyperscalers are going to be one of the bigger customers moving forward for energy,” Murray Auchincloss, Mr. Looney’s successor at BP, told analysts last month.
Mr. Looney’s experience with the multibillion-dollar projects that are common in the energy industry, as well as his past work with potential international investors like the oil producers in the Persian Gulf may be useful in his new role.
In Mr. Looney’s three years as chief executive of BP, the company shook up its leadership as he announced plans to cut back oil and gas production while increasing investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Some of these ambitions have since been scaled back as investors increasingly prefer profits from oil and gas to mixed results from renewable energy sources. But companies like Google prefer clean energy.
“He is one of the folks in the world who is highly connected,” Mr. Thornock said. “He has great credibility in the sustainability and energy space.”
Mr. Looney said he wanted to help Prometheus Hyperscale address what he called downsides of A.I., including the concern that the fast-growing demand for electricity would lead to increases in emissions. “We have to work on that,” he said.
The Wyoming data center will be initially powered by wind and gas. There is also a possibility that nuclear energy will be used in the future through a partnership with Oklo, a start-up led by Sam Altman, chief executive of the ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Prometheus also will use what it says is a unique liquid cooling system to save large amounts of energy.
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