On September 13, Beijing time, local time in the United States, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with senior Biden administration officials and other industry leaders at the White House on Thursday to discuss how to meet the massive infrastructure needs of artificial intelligence (AI) projects.
People familiar with the matter said that other technology leaders attending the meeting included Google President Ruth Porat, Microsoft President Brad Smith and AI startup Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Representatives from the energy industry also attended the meeting. White House administration officials participating in the meeting included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
A White House official said that the goal of this meeting is to promote public-private cooperation around the construction of AI data centers in the United States. Topics discussed at the meeting included permitting, labor, power needs and the economic impact of the facilities, people familiar with the matter said. For example, OpenAI plans to use investments from around the world to invest tens of billions of dollars to promote the construction of US AI infrastructure, covering data centers, energy capacity, transmission and semiconductor manufacturing. OpenAI executives have been meeting with government officials for months to discuss a range of issues related to the program, including possible national security concerns related to foreign investment.
OpenAI said in a statement on Thursday: "OpenAI believes that infrastructure determines destiny, and building more infrastructure in the United States is critical to the country's industrial policy and economic future." OpenAI emphasized the economic benefits of investing in U.S. data center projects, including the potential creation of 40,000 jobs in multiple states.
Google President Porat said that a sound U.S. energy infrastructure is crucial to ensuring the U.S.’s leadership in the emerging field of AI. "Today's meeting at the White House is an important opportunity to advance the work needed to modernize and expand the capacity of America's energy grid," she said in a statement.
In the United States, the surge in AI-fueled data center construction coincides with the Chip and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act boosting the entire manufacturing industry. These two landmark subsidy bills will be signed and implemented by US President Biden in 2022, aiming to support the development of the semiconductor and clean energy industries.
As of press time, Microsoft and Anthropic had not commented.