OpenAI Ultraman bets on solar power to drive AI development Jointly invests US$20 million in Exowatt

OpenAI Ultraman bets on solar power to drive AI development

Jointly invests US$20 million in Exowatt

Nowadays, when we enjoy the various conveniences provided by large artificial intelligence models represented by ChatGPT, we cannot ignore the issue of power consumption.

As Ami Badani, chief marketing officer of the British semiconductor company Arm, said at the world-famous magazine Fortune's Artificial Intelligence Brainstorming Conference in April this year: "The energy consumed in running ChatGPT is more than that of a traditional web search. 15 times. We won’t be able to continue advancing AI without solving the power problem.”

Moreover, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also warned about the power consumption problem of artificial intelligence in January 2024, saying that an "energy revolution" is needed to promote the development of artificial intelligence.

These remarks suggest that before artificial intelligence can bring disruptive changes to society, the energy required to drive the technology must be lower than the power it generates. Otherwise, based on current trends, AI may consume a quarter of the electricity in the United States by 2030[1].

Based on this, practitioners from artificial intelligence, climate and other fields are looking for cheap and rapidly scalable energy systems.

Recently, Altman teamed up with venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Atomic to provide up to $20 million in seed round financing for Exowatt, a new modular energy company.

Exowatt is headquartered in Miami, Florida, USA, and was founded in 2023 by Atomic founders Jack Abraham and Hannan Parvizian, who currently serves as the co-founder of Exowatt And CEO.

The reason why they founded such a company is mainly to quickly respond to the growing energy needs of the modern world, especially the increasingly prominent energy needs based on the rapid development of artificial intelligence. After all, AI models are doubling in size every three months, a rate that will significantly increase data center power needs.

Driven by these goals, the company developed a three-in-one modular energy system designed to power data centers, combining thermal collectors, thermal batteries, and heat engines that provide dispatchable power and heat.

The entire energy system is constructed from modules made of U.S.-made components and about the size of a standard 40-foot shipping container. It uses specially developed solar lenses to collect solar energy in the form of heat and store it in a thermal battery, which then transfers the stored heat to an engine to generate electricity.

The thermal energy can be stored in the thermal battery for up to 24 hours at a fraction of the cost of traditional electrochemical cells.

While Exowatt has not disclosed the technology used to store thermal energy, it is worth noting that the company has hired several employees with a background in photonics.

“One of the biggest questions of our time is figuring out how to power a future of widespread artificial intelligence without destroying the planet.”

"Exowatt's mission is to do this at scale through a modular approach and reduce the cost of electricity to $0.01/kWh over time," Abraham wrote on LinkedIn.

"You don't have to go back to fossil fuels to solve the data center energy problem," Parvezian told the outlet.

The technology proposed by the company is different from traditional solutions in that it not only does not require large upfront costs and extended setup time, but can also be deployed quickly, cost-effectively and efficiently, and can go to market later this year.

At the same time, Exowatt is also unique in that it can provide a dispatchable power solution, which means that users can use this solution around the clock without any intermittency. Because of its modular nature, it can also be easily expanded from small to large projects.

In addition, getting investment from Ultraman is also one of the important reasons why Exowatt is highly concerned. Backing from high-profile investors, including Altman, will allow Exowatt to build data centers or serve large tech clients at hyperscale enterprises, according to Parvzian.

In fact, this is not the first time Altman has invested in energy companies. Prior to this, he also invested in Helion Energy and Oklo, two energy companies specializing in controlled nuclear fusion and nuclear fission power generation respectively.

Among them, it is worth mentioning that Microsoft, as the first customer of the previous company, hopes to obtain fusion power provided by the company in four years.

In addition, it should be noted that because Exowatt and other energy companies including the above-mentioned companies are still in their infancy, in the short term, data centers will also use electricity obtained from nuclear and solar power generation.

Moreover, judging from the actual situation, since the technical solutions of the above-mentioned nuclear fusion and nuclear fission companies cannot be successfully deployed in 2025 or even in the next five years, Exowatt, which can provide solutions for immediate deployment, is expected to compete in this energy competition. take the lead.