Locator: 50271OHIO.
Locator: 50271AI.
My takeaway from all this, for investors: when non-AI Fortune 500 companies make CAPEX announcements, those announcements are generally in the single-digit billions; in AI announcements, it's in the double-digits billion and not uncommon, in the triple-digit billions -- and it's real hardware and real energy initiatives that are being planned. This is not a bubble.
From the blog last August, link here:
Today, from oilprice: link here.
Department of Energy press release here.
AI prompt: Lordstown Portsmouth Ohio AI data center natural gas power Cleveland Columbus what's going on?
Google Gemini:
The role JD Vance played:
The AI prompt:
Interesting. Yes, put the vertically integrated AI-energy stack together for me. Also, PJM, I assume.
Reply: another long thread which I won't re-post. But PJM is the choke point.Where the money is made:
- OpenAI
- MSFT
- GOOG
- AWS
- Palantir Technologies
Where AI actually runs (building large campuses in the Columbus region):
- AWS
- MSFT Azure
- GOOG Cloud
The compute hardware layer (energy availability = compute availability), this is why location (Ohio, Texas, Virginia) matters again:
- Nvidia
- AMD
- Intel
Data center developers / operators:
- Eqinix
- Digital Realty
- hyperscalers building their own
- in Ohio
- Columber - major cluster
- Lordstorn - emerging and contestedthese players used to just lease power; now they are partnering with utilities and generators.
Power generation layer -- this is where the game changed:
- AEP
- SoftBank Group (Japan)
- independent power producers
Fuel supply layer:
- Appalachian Basin natural gas: Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia)
- pipelines
- this is why Ohio is uniquely positioned
- it sits on / near one of the largest gas supplies in North America
The referee = PJM:
- covers Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia
- PJM: the ring that rules them all
- demand exceeds supply: PJM will decide what gets built; what doesn't get built
Ohio: ground zero, checks every box --
- access to largest competitive power market in the US;
- natural gas proximity (note that despite the Iran war, the price of natural gas in the US has now increase)
- geography: close to East Coast demand;political alignment: pro-development; willing to subsidize
- New England is going to rue the day they stopped natural gas pipelines from Pennsvylvania
The deeper strategic takeaway:
- we are watching the re-industrialization of computing
- steel mills needed coal and railroads
- auto plants needed supply chains (and railroads)
- now: AI needs electricity at industrial scale
One sentence summary:
- the winners in AI won't just control algorithms -- they'll control electricity.
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Bragging Rights
Bragging Rights
AI prompt: just for the fun of it, in some kind of order, rank the states on bragging rights with regard to AI ten years from now. In terms of "compute," or "energy requirements," or value to national security, or value to national GDP, how would one rank these five states with regard to AI, and if I missed any: west coast to east coast -- California, Utah, Texas, Ohio, Virginia:
Reply:
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