The Future of AI Infrastructure

This newsletter will cover a special technology topic relating to a technology we all know about: AI.

I’m writing this to accomplish two things:

AI consumes TONS of energy, and that demand is only set to increase. Last year, I was fortunate to speak with Randy Glen, Founder & Managing Partner of DFJ Growth Venture Capital (with investments in major players like OpenAI, SpaceX, Coinbase, xAI, and ScaleAI). Given his birds-eye view of the AI infrastructure landscape, I asked him where the most significant opportunities for growth lie.

His answer is the topic I am discussing in this article… power infrastructure.

The Problem

Having worked in the blockchain industry, I became curious about AI's environmental impact, especially regarding power consumption. Bitcoin mining would occasionally cause power outages due to the vast energy required, and I began to see a common thread between the energy demands of blockchain and AI technologies.

Here are the statistics:

Since the United States has the largest number of data centers (>5,000) [1], data centers are projected to use 8-9% of U.S. power by the end of the decade [2]

[1] Data centers worldwide by country 2024 | Statista

[2] AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand | Goldman Sachs

Clearly, this is a large and complex issue that deserves to be recognized. Non-renewable resources have been used more to accommodate for the AI boom, but big tech is pushing for alternative energy sources such as nuclear and solar to make more significant progress in this sector.

The Infrastructure

I made this diagram to show the heavy dependence on electricity on the whole process. We need electricity for the manufacturing of CPUs & GPUs and for running data centers.

Electricity is the next big barrier towards more advanced AI and other technological advancements, which is why we see huge investments in corporate AI initiatives.

In the following newsletters, I will share bi-weekly AI & Blockchain topics, my student in tech journey, and will strive to be a source of encouragement for you guys!

Expect another newsletter about Federated Learning Models and how blockchain and AI can be combined to be a potential solution to the problems discussed in this newsletter.

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