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Chamath: Hyperscalers should subsidize residential electricity costs to solve AI’s PR crisis Right now, there is a narrative that “AI may take your job while doubling your electric bill.” That narrative has contributed to the recent cancellation of three major datacenter projects by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon in three different locales. Chamath believes 1) this is a major problem for the entire AI movement, but 2) it’s fixable. His plan: hyperscalers should use their massive cash positions to subsidize residential electricity costs in areas where they want to build datacenters. “Google was planning a $1B spend on a data center in Indianapolis.” “There was enough pushback, and so I think to avoid what would've been an awkward press cycle, Google just pulled it.” “In this same week, it happened two other times.” “In Wisconsin, there was a proposal very similar to Google's, but this time from Microsoft. And in the 11th hour, Microsoft pulled it.” “And then in the third example, there was an attempt by an Amazon datacenter to get built near Tucson that I think also was mothballed.” “I do think that this is the beginning of a trend.” “Why is this happening? People are seeing their prices of electricity go up in the local areas where the datacenters are being built.” “These hyperscalers need to get these communities on their side.” “We can't have this narrative that AI may take your job away while it's also doubling your electricity price, because they're not feeling and seeing the abundance that we think (AI) can offer.” “We need to figure out how to fix this because you can't have Google, Microsoft and Amazon cancel essential projects that advance this entire sector and economy forward.” “We're not talking about some random fly by night business here, we're talking about three of the five pinnacle horsemen of the AI race.” “I think that we can fix those problems.” “My idea is, you have to use the balance sheet of these big companies. And it can act as a cushion for a lot of what needs to happen.” “They can pay higher tariffs for electricity. They can also just frankly, go and pay for some amount of the electricity bill of these local folks. They could pay for solar and storage if they wanted to.” “There’s a plethora of ideas here where they probably are going to need to step in to market to get folks on their side, and I think they have to do it.”

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