# AI power needs grow half an order of magnitude per year — beyond 1GW means nuclear

- **Speaker:** Greg Osuri
- **Attribution:** attributed
- **Said:** 2024-11-09
- **Theme:** Energy & AI — https://www.gregosuri.com/predictions/energy-ai/
- **Source:** Why Decentralized AI Needs Cosmos: Greg Osuri of Akash Explains (The Interop)
- **Watch at:** 00:39:56 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_gGBRqzxrQ&t=2396s
- **Canonical:** https://www.gregosuri.com/predictions/energy-ai/2024-11-09-ai-power-needs-grow-half-an-order-of-magnitude-per-nofg/
- **Cite as:** Greg Osuri, "AI power needs grow half an order of magnitude per year — beyond 1GW means nuclear," Why Decentralized AI Needs Cosmos: Greg Osuri of Akash Explains (The Interop), 9 Nov 2024, 00:39:56. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_gGBRqzxrQ&t=2396s

## Quote — verbatim

> The notion is that every year the amount of power we need is growing by half an order \[of\] magnitude... Grok was \[a\] 50 megawatt \[data\] center — you don't have 50 megawatt supply in a single source, so they literally are burning diesel... the next model is going to be 250 megawatt, and the model after that, the next year, is going to be 1.2 gigawatt... to get anything beyond a gigawatt you need a nuclear reactor.

## Context — site annotation, not spoken

GPT-3 ≈ 10MW, xAI's Memphis site ≈ 50MW; he rules out solar-only at that scale (battery cooling losses) and cites Microsoft's Three Mile Island purchase and ~90 approved new US reactors.