Anthropic Joins AI Energy Alliance, Apple Launching Servers  🔗 **Source:** [Anthropic Joins AI Energy Alliance, Apple Launching Servers](https://share.snipd.com/episode/ab863131-c9c9-4c07-af30-5182321cc97e) ## Highlights - **AI Infrastructure Cannot Be Sped Up Like Software** - AI’s expansion depends on power generation, data centers, chips, and memory as much as software progress. - Electrical hookups can take a decade, while manufacturing facilities require years of planning and construction. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer Welcome to the podcast. Today, I want to talk about a bunch of breakthroughs, AI news and build outs when it comes to AI hardware. I think we've had a lot of talk lately about should we slow down AI? Should we not slow down AI? Pacing the frontier with Dario Amadei. But the one thing that I think nobody is debating is the fact that this AI is going to need a lot of a lot of power generation, a lot of data centers, a lot of chips and a lot of memory. And all of those things aren't something you could say, let's pace the development of because a data center might take 10 years to get a proper electrical hookup to it. These things, this infrastructure takes a very long time to get built out. The manufacturing facilities take a very long time, the planning that goes into it. So today I want to talk about some of the areas that we're accelerating on and some of the big advancements we're seeing in the hardware side. ([Time 0:00:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c4a5dcf9-f51e-4bf0-8e12-4ed74310d8a3)) - **Apple Plans A 2029 Server Comeback** - Apple plans to reenter servers around 2029 with M8 Ultra chips and Nvidia interconnect technology. - The move reflects rising demand for AI hardware, memory, and dedicated data-center capacity. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer The first one I want to talk about is that Apple is basically bringing back their server market. They're coming back into the server market. They're going to do this in 2029 with their M8 Ultra, and they're going to use NVIDIA Lynx. This is a market that they left, and I'll talk a little bit about that. I also want to talk about the fact that SK Hynix out of South Korea is in talks with Intel to make memory chips in the United States. If you have been following what's going on with AI, you know that memory is one of the massive biggest bottlenecks. And there are only three companies that are currently doing this specific type of memory. At the same time, we have Nvidia, Google, Emerald AI, which all launching something called the Alliance for Grid Flexible AI Data Centers. It's the AI Energy Management Alliance. And there's actually 18 members. So Anthropic is part of it. National Grid is part of it. AES, NRG, all of them are coming together to create an interconnected grid. ([Time 0:01:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/93230043-e19d-4733-8a94-4c2d7ce5843d)) - **Mac Minis Gave Apple A Server Market Signal** - Apple’s Mac Mini briefly became popular as a low-cost platform for running OpenClaw agents. - Jaeden Schafer argues Apple may have recognized an opportunity to sell company-scale servers after seeing desktop hardware used like miniature servers. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer Let's talk about what's going on with Apple first. So this is 15 years after they killed X server. If you'll remember, Apple is looking to get back into servers. And how they'll essentially put this together is they will have four M8 Ultra chips and NVIDIA's NVLink Fusion. And all of this is how they're going to be building out their new server, basically a new server offering. I think what's interesting here is we've seen a lot of Apple is basically one of the people that one of the companies people have criticized heavily. They're like, oh my gosh, Apple's missing the AI boom. They're so slow. Their new Siri, the Apple intelligence, everything was so slow. And yet, if you look at the stock price of Apple, it has not declined over this. They have actually made some incredible progress and it doesn't seem like the stock is declining. And one of the big reasons is because Apple, I don't know if it was accidentally or however you want to say it, but the hardware of Apple has been greatly used. And I think one of the big examples a lot of people will point to is when OpenClaw came out, basically everyone was running out to go buy a whole stack of Mac Minis that they were running OpenClaw agents on. Now, I think that Mac Mini craze was kind of short-lived. It was kind of a quick moment. Obviously, the Mac mini is just a great, a great product. And so I think a lot of people would just use it as a as a good computer. But I think they Apple did see a very real very large explosion in sales because of that. And they've realized, hey, look, I mean, you're basically a little server on someone's desk. Why don't we make actual servers for companies that are paying crazy amounts of money? Is this something that's growing up? Scaling up as companies are looking to have their own virtual machines. They want their own agents in the cloud. I think Apple caught the vision. They got probably a little taste of that. And so this is kind of the direction that they're moving towards. ([Time 0:03:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/537c83ba-7dc2-43bb-89a7-cbc285c7bee0)) - **Apple Turns Back To Nvidia For AI Servers** - Apple’s planned servers would combine four M8 Ultra chips through Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion. - The partnership marks a shift from Apple’s historically rocky Nvidia relationship toward Nvidia’s chip-stitching technology for AI workloads. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer Again, this isn't going to happen until 2029. Know this because they said that this is going to be the they're going to have four m8 ultra chips they just announced the m6 generation of chips in august so the m8 line is at least two silicone Cycles out and so we know that the you know announcing it on the m8 it's going to probably be 2029 these servers are also going to probably incorporate nvidia's nv link fusion this is the Same technology that nvidia uses to stitch multiple chips into one logical unit so you know they have their chips but they're going to probably using nvidia to stitch them all together This is interesting because apple is already kind of they had a pretty rocky relationship with NVIDIA for a while, but they've turned back to NVIDIA and turned back to their chips to Help power the revamped Siri servers. So their relationship has been on the rocks for a while. It looks like they are defying that and getting back into it. And this is going to be a big part of what powers their new server offering. ([Time 0:05:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b7f06cf6-59f9-4e0b-b26e-78c28d1132e0)) - **SK Hynix May Bring HBM Production To America** - SK Hynix is discussing U.S. memory production with Intel, potentially using Intel fabs for the first time. - Producing high-bandwidth memory closer to American AI demand could ease a bottleneck dominated by only three major suppliers. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer We have some big news out of South Korea. SK Hynix is in talks with Intel to make memory chips in the United States. The South Korean memory giant would use Intel's US fabs for the first time. This is probably a big shift in where HBM is going for AI accelerators and where they're going to get built. The reason why this isn't interesting to me is because there's only three major companies that are building this specific type of memory. And by the way, SK Hynix is what's making the memory that powers a lot of NVIDIA's tech. So this is a major company. We have them, we have Samsung, and then we have one other company out of Idaho that is building these specific memory chips. And so this is really kind of a global bottleneck, but I think they're seeing that there's, you know, most of the demand is coming inside of the United States. Obviously, China is going to have a lot of demand, but there's probably could be sanctions or I'm not sure what South Korea's situation is there. I think they see the demand coming out of the United States and they want to move closer to it. They're also making this. The interesting part is the relationship they have with Intel right now. Intel right now and Intel Foundry has basically been searching for an anchor customer to justify a massive US manufacturing build out. They've been talking about this for a long time. We know that Intel stock was sliding and, you know, kind of, I don't want to say cratering, but Intel has struggled for a long time. It really should be one of the big companies we're talking about all the time. And we had the old CEO lead. We brought in a new CEO and Intel's been on kind of a generational run for the last little bit. They've made a lot of partnerships with the United States government. And so it feels like Intel is kind of getting its mojo back, and they're making a lot of moves. They recently announced a massive buildout, U.S. Manufacturing buildout. And with that, they need customers. And so it looks like SK Hynix might be one of the big customers that's going to start building in their U.S. Fabrication facilities. This is all according to some reports by routers. This particular deal would be the first time SK Hynix produces memory in the United States. Traditionally, it's all been done in South Korea. SK Hynix is also basically the dominant supplier of high bandwidth memory to NVIDIA's AI accelerators. So it's, you know, just kind of speeding up the supply chain on a lot of that. ([Time 0:05:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f294383e-aace-406e-80da-196e53f22598)) - **Flexible Data Centers Could Unlock 100 Gigawatts** - The AI Energy Management Alliance believes flexible data centers could unlock 100 gigawatts from the existing U.S. grid. - Brattle Group estimates each 10% increase in utilization could reduce electricity rates by roughly 3.4%. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer We also have NVIDIA, Google and Emerald AI, which are launching a alliance for what they're calling grid flexible AI data centers. This is called the AI Energy Management Alliance. There's about 18 different companies that are inside of this. What's interesting with this, it was just launched this month and founders Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA are all estimating that flexible, flexible data centers could unlock 100 Gigawatts in the existing US grid. So what they're saying is that essentially the United States, the US power grid is only running at about 50% utilization on average. And I mean, you can imagine there's peak hours. And sometimes when that happens in California or Texas, you hear about like blackouts or brownouts, or, you know, and there's a big storm and there parts of the grid go down, like there's All sorts of issues. But generally speaking, on the average day, we're sitting at about 50% utilization is probably like peak hours in the evening time when everyone gets home and is charging their electric Cars or, and you know, in the middle of the day, when people are at work, it's lower in the middle of the night, it's off, right? So there's ups and downs in this, but it's on average about 50% utilization. Their thesis on this, there's actually something called Brattle Group, and they're estimating that each 10% gain in grid utilization is going to lower electrical rates by about 3.4%. So they're saying, look, we have the capacity to generate double the electricity. If we went from 50% to 60%, everyone's electrical costs would drop 3.4% because there'd be more abundance in electricity. And so it would just, I mean, I think a lot of it gets down to like peak usage times. You're not going to be paying peak prices. And so if there's just more electricity, there's more surplus, the peak, I guess, would be smaller. And so you'd save money. ([Time 0:08:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a515e3b4-4243-4419-a2dc-03fc63e3ab84)) - **Diesel Generators Bypassed A Ten-Year Grid Wait** - Nvidia, Digital Realty, and Emerald AI planned a 100-megawatt flexible AI factory in Virginia. - Elon Musk’s Memphis facility bypassed long grid-connection delays by deploying portable diesel generators, despite pollution lawsuits. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer So that's their estimation, NVIDIA, digital reality and Emerald AI are going to switch on and they're about to switch on about 100 megawatt power flexible AI factory in Virginia later This year. So there's obviously something they're looking at getting power for these data centers. And for a lot of these projects is an absolute nightmare. It's very tricky. Apparently, US data centers currently wait up to 10 years or more for a grid connection under some of the existing interconnection processes. And this is why you had Elon Musk when he stood up his Memphis facility, he literally went and just, you know, purchased every portable diesel generator he could get and shipped it over To the facility. And instead of plugging into the grid, just powered the whole thing off of diesel generators, you know, much to the chagrin and a whole bunch of lawsuits about like pollution and that Kind of stuff. But this is how he got the data center up and spinning. And lest you think it's kind of random, I mean, that data center in particular, he's building much bigger projects. But that particular data center is making a billion dollars a month, about 900 million, a billion dollars a month, roughly renting their their extra space, their extra compute to Anthropik. So Anthropik's paying them a billion dollars a month. The only reason they can make that much money, though, is because they kind of threw this together in a, you know, in a sort of not traditional way. So a lot of these data centers aren't looking to go and rent every portable generator i think spacex or i guess it's spacex now it was xai at the time when they built this thing i'm sure they've Kind of they've built in some ([Time 0:09:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6714734e-90b4-42ec-8b7b-21fbad10bd57)) - **Grid Flexibility Is Becoming An AI Race** - Grid flexibility could connect more AI data centers while reducing waste from uneven electricity demand. - Jaeden Schafer frames better power utilization as strategically urgent because China is expanding generation faster than the United States. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer More sustainable i'm hoping they've built in some some more sustainable power generation methods but at the end of the day these things are very hard very tricky so the the goal of this New alliance is to figure out how to plug into the grid and just increase the grid's utilization. The costs should come down for everyone, but they are also going to be able to plug in a lot of these big data center projects. It's a problem we're going to have to wrestle with. China is absolutely out accelerating us to an insane degree when it comes to power generation. And if we want to power all of the projects that are currently under construction, we need to solve this. So this appears to be the solution that is being looked at by many people. ([Time 0:11:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ba80774-81bd-48ec-9176-31e0c80c2b7c))