WHY SAM ALTMAN IS BETTING ON SOLAR TO HELP POWER AI

AI needs more energy and Sam Altman is investing. The OpenAI CEO joined big name VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and Atomic in a $20 million seed round of funding for solar energy company Exowatt. The Miami-based startup is developing a modular energy platform to power data centers at a time when AI is expected to substantially drive up the power needs of global data centers. AI advocates are on the hunt for cheap and rapidly scalable energy systems as the energy needs of the technology explode. Exowatt's technology is a three-in-one, modular energy system roughly the size of a 40-foot shipping container. It uses what Exowatt CEO and co-founder Hannan Parvizian calls "a specially developed lens" to collect solar energy in the form of heat and store it in a heat battery. The stored heat is then run through an engine to convert it to electricity. Exowatt anticipates its solution could cut the cost of electricity down to $0.01 per kilowatt-hour once it hits scale. "What I think is unique about Exowatt is that we can provide a power solution that's dispatchable--that means you can have access to it throughout the day without any intermittencies--it's modular, you can scale it from small projects to large, it's built in the U.S. of course, and, most importantly, it's available today," Parvizian says. The amount of electricity that data centers around the world need could jump 50 percent by 2027 as a result of AI, according to one estimate from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's School of Business and Economics. Big tech companies and investors have begun eyeing nuclear power to meet the need. Altman, for example, is also invested in two nuclear power companies called Helion and Oklo, according to the Wall Street Journal. Exowatt offers another solution. "I do think we will have nuclear and other forms of energy on the grid that will also help support data centers, but if you think about it in practical terms, none of those technologies will be able to be deployed in the next year or even the next five years," Parvizian says. "I think Exowatt has a unique advantage here in being able to offer solution that can be deployed immediately." Parvizian says support from big name investors including Altman will position the company to serve "big tech customers building data centers or hyperscalers. Atomic CEO and founder Jack Abraham is also a co-founder of Exowatt.