Anthropic pledges to cover the cost of upgrades to grid infrastructure to reduce price increases
Anthropic, the company behind popular AI chatbot Claude, has pledged to cover any electricity price increases that consumers face as a result of its data centers.
AI data centers use significantly more electricity than standard data centers and are putting increasing pressure on national grids. Anthropic says training a single frontier AI model could soon require “gigawatts of power” - or enough energy to power up to 1 million homes.
This huge increase in demand can result in the need for expensive infrastructure updates and can increase prices as a result of a huge increase in demand.
“The country needs to build new data centers quickly to maintain its competitiveness on AI and national security – but AI companies shouldn’t leave American ratepayers to pick up the tab,” Anthropic said in a statement.
The company has promised to pay for 100 percent of the costs of grid upgrades needed to connect its data centers, which it will pay for through its monthly electricity bills. It claims these costs could otherwise be passed on to consumers.
Anthropic also says it will work with utility providers to “bring net-new power generation online” to match its needs and will cover any demand-led price increases.
“Done right, AI infrastructure can be a catalyst for the broader energy investment the country needs,” the company added. “These commitments are the beginning of our efforts to address data centers’ impact on energy costs. We have more to do, and we’ll continue to share updates as this work develops.”
The development follows shortly after Microsoft set out a new framework for how it builds and operates AI data centers in the United States, with commitments spanning energy costs, water use, jobs, tax contributions, and local AI skills development.
