Elon Musk says AI could run into power issues by middle of next year

Elon Musk said Tuesday that artificial intelligence development could run into power generation problems by the middle of next year, as the technology industry builds increasingly large data centers.

Musk told CNBC in an interview that his artificial intelligence startup xAI is planning a gigawatt-size facility outside Memphis, Tenn. He said the facility would be complete in six to nine months. A gigawatt is equivalent to the power capacity of the average nuclear plant in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy.

Musk said AI faces three major limitations as it scales up: chips, transformers and power generation. Transformers are used to ramp down the voltage of electricity produced by power plants so it can used by computers.

“As we solve the transformer shortage, there will be the fundamental electricity generation shortage,” Musk told CNBC’s David Faber. “My guess is people are going to start hitting challenges with power generation maybe by the middle of next year, end of next year.”

Alphabet’s Google unit warned in February that the U.S. is facing a power capacity crisis as the U.S. races against China to achieve dominance in AI. Google started looking into nuclear energy after realizing renewables were potentially causing instability on the grid, said Caroline Golin, Google’s global head of energy market development. The output of wind and solar is dependent on weather conditions.

Google ran into a “very stark reality that we didn’t have enough capacity on the system to power our data centers in the short term and then potentially in the long term,” Golin said at a February conference hosted by the Nuclear Energy Institute in New York City.

Musk said Tuesday that China is building significantly more power generation than U.S. “China power generation looks like a rocket going to orbit and U.S. power generation is flat,” the Tesla CEO said.

Musk’s xAI is using natural gas turbines to help power its Colossus data center in Memphis. Environmental advocates have accused xAI of violating the Clean Air Act and permitting requirements for “major sources of air pollution” by using gas turbines without mitigation technologies or permits in place.

Utilities such as Dominion Energy told investors on recent earnings calls that they are not seeing evidence of slowing data center demand, despite anxiety in the market that the tech sector might cut back on concerns about of a possible recession. Dominion serves the largest data center market in the world located in northern Virginia.

But Constellation Energy cautioned that although demand is strong, some of the forecasts by utilities are overstated as developers shop their data centers in multiple jurisdictions. Constellation is the largest operator of nuclear plants in the U.S.

“I just have to tell you, folks, I think the load is being overstated,” CEO Joe Dominguez said on the power company’s first quarter earnings call. “We need to pump the brakes here.”