Dario's essay points towards the right path forward. The details need working through, but the direction is correct for meeting this critical moment. This is also why we recently put out our proposal for an industry-wide standards body for frontier AI.

Update: California appears to have blown through record peak grid demand in yesterday’s heat wave. No reliability problems, very mild energy prices volatility given the situation. Natural gas, solar, and batteries for the reliability win.

Never understood why we call the phase that consumes >90% of AI training compute "pre-training." It’s not prep work! It’s a main event. Modest proposal: replace “pre-training” with “base” or “foundation” training.

Wow - bipartisan former Secretaries of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin in the Washington Post today calling for the US and China to work toward a "AI Cooperation Treaty" in response to frontier AI risk.

Yesterday, we (the Electricity Customer Alliance) alongside partners at National Grid and Converge Strategies released a new report the examines a critical question: Can expanding transmission help meet growing demand while also improving affordability and reliability? 1/ 🧵

Important paper that I highly encourage folks to read. To say it explicitly, a foundational problem is the way ERIS is administered in most regions is in no way “connect and manage” and instead is still “connect and invest” albeit with slightly higher thresholds for CA.

ERCOT's "connect and manage" model gets the buzz in grid reform debates, but U.S. regions already offer a non-firm option: Energy Resource Interconnection Service. So why are IX queues still bottlenecked? Our new paper in Energy Policy investigates 🧵 👇️

Utilities should love flexible AI data centers: important points from @tylerhnorris, @SlBrandin, @jchrisshelton: better utilizing power system increases potential investment in infrastructure and utility returns, while keeping rates affordable. Plus, utilities don't get disintermediated by data centers going off grid because they can't connect in a timely manner

The mechanism behind data centers offsetting electricity rates comes down to one basic concept: asset utilization. High load factor demand dilutes fixed transmission and generation costs over more volume, putting downward pressure on average $/kWh for other ratepayers. That dynamic doesn't obviate the need for new infrastructure, and it can be dampened by near-term wholesale price trends or amplified by flexible loads and other technologies. But the basic driver is straightforward.

Dolly Parton on supporting the LGBTQ+ community (2016): “I do not believe we should criticize and judge other people. If you’re the fine Christian you think you are, why are you judging people? I just think we should be more loving, more caring. We are who we are. If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. You should be allowed to be how you are and who you are”

🦄 Delighted to announce @EmeraldAI_'s $150 million Series A round, valuing us at more than $1 billion with over $220 million raised to date! Read more in The New York Times: 📢Read our full announcement: 📺Watch our launch on CNBC Squawk Box: 🔗And dive deeper at our website: ⚡Emerald AI is transforming AI data centers into flexible grid allies to unlock 100+GW of power for AI while protecting energy affordability and reliability for local communities. After 18 months of demonstrations—across five data centers all over the world—we've entered our commercial scaling phase and are now deployed at multi-MW, full data center scale with customers spanning the world's biggest AI pioneers, global data center platforms, and leading power utilities. We're proud to collaborate with @NVIDIA, @Digitalrealty, @EPRINews, and others to launch the world's first power-flexible AI Factory—roughly 100MW in Manassas, Virginia—later this year, creating the blueprint for a new generation of flexible DSX AI infrastructure that will be good citizens to power grids and local communities. We're also honored to partner with @SantaClaraPower on the nation's first Flexible Load Interconnection Program (FLIP) to provide additional power capacity to flexible AI data centers. 🤝We are so grateful to our incredible consortium of investors, co-led by @EnergizeCapital and @DCVC, as well as to the extraordinary syndicate of leading global financial and strategic investors. Emerald now counts 12 Fortune 500 Global companies as our investors. Many thanks to Series A investors including @NVIDIA, @SamsungVentures, @aramcoventures, @Siemens, @SalesforceVC, @GEVernova, @RWE_AG, @jeraventures, @ADI_News Ventures, @SabanciHolding, In-Q-Tel, @radicalvcfund, @EnergyImpact_, @lowercarbon, Marunouchi Innovation Partners, @EmCollective, @johndoerr, The Olayan Group, The Temerty Group, @EarthshotVC, @collectiveGBL, General Catalyst's scout fund, and others. 🚀This funding will be instrumental as we rapidly scale commercially across the United States and around the world. Our vision is simple: secure larger and faster power connections for AI while making sure AI gives back to the communities that host it. At Emerald AI, we believe that the biggest new user of electricity—AI data centers—can also be the grid's greatest ally, and a boon for local communities by protecting energy affordability and reliability. Thank you to all of our customers, partners, investors, and our incredible team (grateful to the leadership team pictured below Ayse Coskun Mansi Shah Aroon Vijaykar Shayan Sengupta as well as to the whole fantastic team)—this has already been the journey of a lifetime, and we're just getting started

Fascinating. Some data centers came to a struggling town in Washington state. Did it run out of water? Was the community destroyed? Let’s see. The town…built a new high school, hospital, library, sewage systems, and police & fire stations. Poverty fell from 29% to 6%. Oh.