Amazon and Nvidia Reaffirm AI Data Center Expansion Amid Recession Fears
Despite recession concerns and investor jitters, executives from Amazon and Nvidia stated firmly that the momentum behind artificial intelligence (AI) data center construction remains strong as reported by CNBC.
Speaking at the Hamm Institute for American Energy conference in Oklahoma City, they dismissed speculation that tech giants may be pulling back from large-scale infrastructure buildouts.
Amazon Rejects Wall Street Worries
Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said, “There’s been really no significant change.”
He added, “We continue to see very strong demand, and we’re looking both in the next couple years as well as long term and seeing the numbers only going up.”
Responding to Wells Fargo’s analyst note suggesting Amazon might be mirroring Microsoft’s decision to delay some early-stage projects, Miller clarified, “there’s been little tea leaf reading and extrapolating to strange results” regarding Amazon’s actual strategy.
Nvidia: No Slowdown in Sight
Echoing Amazon’s confidence, Nvidia’s senior director of corporate sustainability, Josh Parker, said the chipmaker sees no pullback in the pace of AI infrastructure growth. “We haven’t seen a pullback,” Parker affirmed, highlighting that the efficiency gains from China’s DeepSeek AI model, which triggered a sell-off in power stocks earlier this year, don’t negate the broader trend of increasing compute and energy requirements.
Parker called the market’s reaction to DeepSeek’s efficiency “kneejerk,” emphasizing that Nvidia expects both compute intensity and energy demand to rise significantly as AI deployment accelerates.
According to CNBC, Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, underscored the scale of the looming power demand, estimating that 50 gigawatts of new baseload power, equivalent to about 50 nuclear plants will be needed by 2027 to meet AI-related compute demands. “What we’re seeing is tremendous growth in the need for new baseload power,” Clark said.
Also read: StorONE and Phison Deepen Partnership to Launch AI-Native On-Premises Storage for LLM Training
Natural Gas to Play a Central Role
As AI’s power needs skyrocket, there is growing consensus among tech and energy leaders that natural gas will be essential to meeting short- to medium-term electricity demand. The Hamm Institute event brought together industry leaders to address how to ensure the US can rapidly scale energy infrastructure in tandem with AI development.
