Artificial Intelligence1 min read

Sources: SoftBank reserved 13GW+ of turbines, equivalent to six Hoover Dams, to power AI; SoftBank took a $3.7B earnings hit mostly from canceled reservations (Wall Street Journal)

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The investment giant moved early to guarantee power for its artificial intelligence initiatives by securing more than 13 gigawatts worth of turbines. That volume of equipment would have generated energy roughly equivalent to the output of six Hoover Dams. However, subsequent cancellations of the reserved equipment triggered a severe $3.7 billion hit to the company's earnings.

Key points

  • Power supply planning for artificial intelligence initiatives carries substantial multi-b…: Power supply planning for artificial intelligence initiatives carries substantial multi-billion-dollar balance sheet exposure.
  • Canceling massive utility-scale equipment commitments can trigger immediate and severe hi…: Canceling massive utility-scale equipment commitments can trigger immediate and severe hits to conglomerate earnings.
  • Securing gigawatt-scale infrastructure remains an expensive bottleneck in the broader dep…: Securing gigawatt-scale infrastructure remains an expensive bottleneck in the broader deployment of artificial intelligence.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

New York Times: |

April Roach / CNBC: |

New York Times: |

New York Times: |

Desmond Shum: |

Owen Walker / Financial Times: |

Vlad Savov / Bloomberg: |

Dylan Sloan / Bloomberg: |

Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal: |

Lenny Rachitsky / Lenny's Newsletter: |

Jake Roach / Tom's Hardware: |

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: |

Jordan Novet / CNBC: |

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg: |

Elizabeth Chamberlain / iFixit News: |

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: |

Koray Kavukcuoglu / Google: |

Declan Harty / Politico: |

Jessica Elgot / The Guardian: |

Richard Adams / The Guardian: |

Eduardo Baptista / Reuters: |

Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg: |

Reuters: |

Andrew Liszewski / The Verge: |

Marcus Mendes / 9to5Mac: |

Jay Peters / The Verge: |

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Artificial Intelligence