# AI data centers are making energy and labor bottlenecks Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-data-centers-are-making-energy-and-labor-bottlenecks/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Chase Lochmiller](https://realalpha.app/builders/chase-lochmiller/) · Co-founder & CEO, Crusoe · Co-founded Crusoe in 2018 on the bet that energy would be AI's biggest bottleneck, and builds the data centers. - Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq. - Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups. - Host: [David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/people/david-sacks/) · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures · PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26. - Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013. - Show: All-In - Episode: [Winning the AI Race Part 3: Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, James Litinsky, Chase Lochmiller](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/), Jul 23, 2025 - Moment: 33:59 to 37:52 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-data-centers-are-making-energy-and-labor-bottlenecks/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2039 ## Quote > “Data centers are forecasted to account for **20% of the growth** in power demand between now and 2030.” > — [Chase Lochmiller](https://realalpha.app/builders/chase-lochmiller/) at [34:12](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2052) · All-In ## Takeaways 1. Data centers could rise from 2.5% to 10% of U.S. power use. 2. Crusoe's Abilene site is designed for 1.2 gigawatts and 400,000 GPUs. 3. About 4,000 people work on site each day. ## About this segment Chase Lochmiller lays out the surge in data-center power demand and the scale of infrastructure being built. His Abilene project shows how quickly that translates into jobs and capital needs. From “Winning the AI Race Part 3: Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, James Litinsky, Chase Lochmiller”, Jul 23, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [34:03](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2043) generating and consuming about 4,000 terawatt hours per year. AI is fundamentally transforming this demand picture, and energy is quickly becoming the bottleneck to growth. Data centers are forecasted to account for 20% of the growth in power demand between now and 2030. And data center total power consumption is going to go from 2.5% of U.S. power consumption to 10%. So what this means is that the technology industry that's sort of willing this infrastructure into existence fundamentally needs to bring its own power to support that growth, which means massive investments not just in data centers, but also in the energy infrastructure to support them. [34:42](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2082) And this will require people, lots of people, to build, operate, maintain, and run these large-scale energy investments. So if we look at data centers, you know, by the numbers, I think it's important, you know, as people are sort of throwing around gigawatt scale data centers, of looking at the amount of data center infrastructure that exists today. Northern Virginia is sort of the center of the world for data centers, but it's only, you know, at the end of 24, it was only four and a half gigawatts. Today, we have companies that are looking at building single five gigawatt facilities. And if you look at this growth, we're building more than a Northern Virginia every single year in the forecasted future. [35:21](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2121) So if there's one thing that you're going to take away from this presentation, it's that we need new infrastructure, we need lots of it, and we need lots of people to build, operate, and maintain it. This is what Crusoe is focused on solving. Crusoe's in the business of activating energy for intelligence, of building, operating AI factories at scale from the steel to the silicon, from the electron to the token. [35:47](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2147) And if you look at our pipeline, we have about 40 gigawatts of capacity that spans all sorts of energy resources, from new energy technologies like small modular reactors to... renewables and natural gas to power this innovative future. So revisiting my formula here, I think we left off one critical component, which is the people. AI infrastructure will be the largest job creation catalyst that we've ever seen. [36:17](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2177) So I think it's important to sort of look at what this looks like in practice. For the last year, Crusoe's been building a large-scale AI factory in Abilene, Texas. And And speed is paramount. Again, this event is winning the AI race. In order to win a race, you really need speed. And Crusoe's really been focused on using modular components, on rapidly scaling investment in construction and infrastructure to support this. [36:46](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2206) And we've actually built a lot of different modular components in factories and brought them to site. And they're kind of like Lego blocks that sort of fit together to build one of these AI factories at rapid scale and speed. So if you look at what this looks like today, you know, this site will consume over 1.2 gigawatts of power and 400,000 NVIDIA GPUs, all in a single coherent cluster. So this will essentially be a gigawatt scale computer to drive human progress forward. [37:23](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2243) You know, it's really amazing what you can kind of accomplish in a year. You see just one year ago, this is what the site looked like, and this is what it looks like today. So what does this mean from a jobs perspective? We have 4,000 people working on site every day to make this facility happen. And it's a bunch of different trades, electricians and plumbers and construction workers. And it's required a lot of capital, too. [37:44](https://realalpha.app/v/9WkGNe27r_Q/?t=2264) We raised $15 billion to basically put this facility and bring it into existence.