Donald Trump soughtto assuage Americans' concerns about rising electricity costs during his State of the Union address — and now it's being reported that the deals he had previously announced could be finalized next week. Trump said he has negotiated a "power consumer protection commitment" with major technology companies, under which they would build or finance new power plants for their data centers.
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According to Fox News, leaders of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI are expected to attend an event on March 4 to sign the relevant commitment.
So far, however, there are few details about what the agreement will entail or how the companies will be guaranteed to meet their obligations. “As part of this ambitious initiative, these large companies will build, secure, or purchase their own electricity supply for new AI data centers,” White House spokesman Taylor Rogersin a message to The Verge.
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"We are telling big tech companies that they have an obligation to meet their own energy needs," Trump stressed in his speech.
Companies expanding their data centers for genetic AI applications are already moving in this direction. Anthropic and Microsoft have recently made voluntary commitments to cover the cost of new power plants to serve their data centers. However, to ensure that these promises are implemented, they will need to sign contracts with utilities and grid operators or enact new regulatory policies at the local level.
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At the same time, Meta has entered into a 15-year agreement to assume the capital cost of three new natural gas-fired power plants being built in Louisiana to power its largest data center to date.
