Investors, including the leading figure in the artificial intelligence business, are contributing millions of dollars to a fledgling energy company that aims to reduce artificial intelligence’s excessive electricity use.
According to a source, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are among the investors in Exowatt, a startup that creates modules that store energy as heat and generate electricity for AI data centers. The startup has raised $20 million in funding for Exowatt.
An Energy-Efficient Solar Option for AI
Exowatt creates modules the size of shipping containers that are equipped with solar lenses to convert solar energy into heat. This heat may be used to warm inexpensive materials and is stored for up to 24 hours. After that, the modules run an engine through the heat they have accumulated to create power. The corporation wants to store energy as heat in order to save money.
“You don’t have to go back to fossil fuels to solve the data-center energy problem…That’s counterproductive,” according to Exowatt CEO Hannan Parvizian’s assessment.
According to reports, the company is concentrating on employing American-made parts for its modules in order to avoid using Chinese-made parts and to be eligible for generous subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. According to reports, Exowatt plans to deliver its modules later this year and aims to sell electricity for as little as one penny per kilowatt-hour, without subsidies.
Leaders in the IT and climate sectors have observed that generative AI consumes an enormous amount of energy and that the sector needs to address its excessive electricity usage.
This month at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference, Ami Badani, the chief marketing officer of semiconductor company Arm, stated, “We won’t be able to continue the advancements of AI without addressing power.” “ChatGPT requires 15 times more energy than a traditional web search.”
According to Badani, data centers that train AI models account for 2% of the world’s electricity use. By 2030, she cautioned, technology might account for 25% of all power used in the United States.
According to first-quarter earnings reports, data centers were the top customer growth sector for nine out of ten U.S. energy companies.
