OpenAI's Altman plans to build AI power plants
Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, just shared plans for a massive project: building a factory that can churn out one gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week.
That's enough energy to power about 876,000 homes each year.
He called it, in his opinion, "the coolest and most important infrastructure project ever," but admits it'll take years and won't be easy.
Altman's big bets on energy and data centers
Altman isn't dreaming small—he's got a $100 billion deal with NVIDIA to secure access to 10 gigawatts of data center power.
Plus, there's the Stargate initiative (with Oracle and SoftBank), which is pumping $500 billion into super-hubs across the US.
One hub in Abilene, Texas is already in motion, with five more on the way.
The challenge of powering AI at city scale
Here's the catch: powering up this much AI every week means using as much energy as an entire city—again and again.
Experts warn this could strain power grids and raise environmental concerns.
Brad Gastwirth calls energy supply the "silent bottleneck" for scaling AI, but Altman sees it as a chance to rethink how we build global infrastructure for the future.