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“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary has said the U.S. and, more broadly, North America is learning an important lesson from Bitcoin miners in the global AI race: proximity to abundant, sustainable energy resources is critical.
“It all comes down to power,” O’Leary told CoinDesk in an interview. “Whether you’re talking about an AI data center or you’re talking about bitcoin mining. And now we are seeing that very often these projects are a bit of both.”
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Faced with growing energy demand, rising costs and shrinking profit margins, Bitcoin miners have forged several innovative strategies to keep the lights on and meet energy demands over the years. One of these strategies has been locating large facilities near cheap, abundant renewable energy sources or underutilized power plants.
O’Leary told CoinDesk that the U.S. and Canada are beginning to realize that they must deploy the same strategy as Bitcoin miners with data centers to win the AI race.
According to the International Energy Agency, AI and cryptocurrency data centers accounted for 2% of global electricity consumption in 2022, roughly 460 terawatt-hours. That number is expected to double to 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, driven by demand for AI computing resources. And according to O’Leary, that power is not available on the grid.
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“We’ve got to bring all this back home, but our biggest problem is power,” he told CoinDesk. “There’s no more power on the domestic grid. Nada. And so, if you want a gigawatt in any state, forget about it. You have to figure out a way to build that power yourself from natural gas or nuclear power or something else.”
O’Leary said amid this realization and economic incentives, states with abundant sustainable energy resources were beginning to open up to AI data centers and Bitcoin mining, as many in the Bitcoin mining business have also expanded to AI.
“I think some states, like New York and others, have figured out these are high-paying jobs at the cutting edge of two new regulated industries, Al and bitcoin mining and crypto. And they feel that somehow they’ve missed out,” he told CoinDesk.
