Google Cloud CEO Lays Out Three-Part Plan to Meet AI Energy Demand

The immense electricity needs of artificial intelligence computing were flagged early as a major bottleneck, prompting Alphabet’s Google Cloud to plan how to source and use energy more efficiently, according to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, Jason Ma reported for Fortune Tech.

Google Cloud will employ a three-pronged strategy to meet rising energy demand. (Image: PointStar) 

Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco on Monday, Kurian said the company had been investing in AI long before large language models surged in popularity and therefore took a long-term view.

“We also knew that the most problematic thing that was going to happen was energy, because energy and data centers were going to become a bottleneck alongside chips,” Kurian told Fortune’s Andrew Nusca.

“So we designed our machines to be super-efficient.”

The International Energy Agency estimates that some AI-focused data centers consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes, while some of the largest facilities under construction could use 20 times that amount.

Kurian outlined Google Cloud’s three-pronged strategy to meet rising energy demand: diversifying energy sources used for AI computing; maximizing efficiency, including reusing energy within data centers; and developing “new fundamental technologies to actually create energy in new forms,” he said.