U.S. President Donald Trump recently said that although data centers are "critical" infrastructure for the current artificial intelligence boom, technology companies must "take their own responsibility" and cannot make ordinary Americans pay for them by pushing up electricity bills.
Trump posted on his social platform Truth Social on Monday: "The first one to come forward is Microsoft, and my team has been communicating with it. Microsoft will make major adjustments starting this week to ensure that Americans no longer 'pay' for their huge electricity consumption through higher electricity bills." He also hinted that there will be more relevant measures and announcements in the coming weeks.
According to previous reports, data centers owned by large technology companies have pushed up residents’ electricity bills in at least 13 states, triggering public opinion and regulatory attention. In the past year, Microsoft has planned and constructed new data center projects in Wisconsin, Atlanta, Texas and Michigan. However, the White House and Microsoft have not yet publicly responded to Trump's latest statement.
The Trump administration's move is seen as putting pressure on large technology companies to "self-raise energy" in the context of its full participation in the global artificial intelligence infrastructure race. Currently, the United States is advancing a very large-scale AI infrastructure construction project code-named "Stargate Project". This plan is jointly participated by Open AI (OpenAI), Oracle and SoftBank, with a total investment of up to 500 billion US dollars. It was announced by Trump in early 2025. As of 2026, construction has begun on at least one Stargate data center in Texas.
The energy consumption of the related projects is staggering. Public information shows that OpenAI’s data center planning investment alone is as high as US$400 billion, and the required power load is approximately 7 gigawatts, exceeding the power consumption of the entire New York City. In order to ease the difficulty of approval and community resistance, some technology companies are trying to "off grid" new data centers and provide independent power supply through self-built natural gas microgrids and other methods.
At the same time, in order to protect residents and small and medium-sized enterprises from the pressure of rising electricity prices, utility companies in places such as Indiana and Ohio have begun to impose additional tariffs or fees on energy-intensive technology facilities. After Trump pointed the finger at Microsoft and asked it to "pay its own electricity bill," it is expected that other cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure giants may also face similar requirements, and the game around "who pays for AI infrastructure" will further escalate.