Anthropic has announced it will cover the increased electricity costs resulting from its data center operations, a move made as the government aims to prevent significant hikes in residential electricity rates. The AI startup, backed by Amazon and Alphabet's Google, stated it will bear the full cost of grid upgrades required to connect its data centers, with these expenses to be paid through a monthly surcharge on its electricity bills. The company also committed to procuring additional power and shielding consumers from price increases.
To meet its data centers' energy demands, Anthropic will facilitate the launch of new power generation projects. In regions where new generation capacity is not yet connected to the grid, the company will collaborate with utility providers and external experts to assess and assume responsibility for any demand-side electricity price impacts caused by its data centers. Furthermore, Anthropic revealed investments in deploying load-shedding systems to reduce data center energy consumption during peak hours and incorporating grid optimization tools, both measures intended to help lower end-user electricity costs.
The company also emphasized its investment in local communities, noting that its current data center projects will create hundreds of permanent jobs and thousands of construction positions. A commitment to addressing environmental impact was included, with plans to utilize water-saving cooling technologies. For instances where it leases existing data center capacity, Anthropic stated it is exploring methods to hedge against the effect its computational workloads may have on electricity prices.
Anthropic highlighted that training a single advanced AI model will soon require gigawatt-scale electricity, and projected that the U.S. AI industry will need at least 50 gigawatts of power capacity in the coming years. "The United States must rapidly build new data centers to maintain its competitiveness in AI and national security, but AI companies should not pass this cost onto American consumers," the company stated.
Last month, the U.S. President expressed reluctance for citizens to bear higher electricity bills due to data centers and indicated that Microsoft would make adjustments to ensure the public does not pay for its power usage. Around the same time, Microsoft's President outlined the company's related commitments, including investments in communities hosting its self-built, self-operated data centers.
A draft proposal reported earlier this week, which has not been finalized and remains subject to change, would require large energy-consuming data centers to avoid increasing residential electricity bills, exacerbating water supply pressures, or compromising grid reliability. The proposal, designed as a voluntary agreement between the administration, major technology firms, and data center developers, stipulates that the companies creating the demand should bear the costs of new infrastructure.
In November 2025, NVIDIA and Microsoft committed to investing up to $10 billion and $5 billion, respectively, in Anthropic. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in Anthropic's competitor OpenAI, holding nearly a 27% stake in the ChatGPT developer. Anthropic's latest funding round is anticipated to exceed $20 billion. The developer of the Claude chatbot has projected its 2026 revenue could reach as high as $18 billion.
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