AI News Monitor

Amazon and Nvidia executives pushed back Thursday on growing investor concerns over a potential slowdown in AI-driven data center development, insisting demand for power and computing capacity continues to rise sharply.

Speaking at an energy conference hosted by the Hamm Institute in Oklahoma City, Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said the company hasn’t made any major changes to its expansion plans. “We continue to see very strong demand,” Miller noted, adding that Amazon’s long-term outlook points to growing energy needs fueled by AI adoption.

His comments come amid reports from Wall Street analysts that Amazon Web Services may be pausing some data center leases—speculation Miller dismissed as misinterpretation. “There’s been a little tea leaf reading and extrapolating to strange results,” he said.

Nvidia echoed Amazon’s sentiment. “We haven’t seen a pullback,” said Josh Parker, Nvidia’s senior director of corporate sustainability. Despite investor jitters following China’s DeepSeek unveiling a potentially more energy-efficient AI model, Parker insisted the broader trajectory still points toward increasing energy consumption.

Industry voices at the event, including Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, emphasized the urgency of preparing for the coming energy surge. Clark estimated the U.S. will need 50 gigawatts of additional power—equivalent to 50 nuclear power plants—by 2027 to support AI infrastructure.

As AI continues to expand, tech and energy leaders agreed that natural gas will likely play a crucial role in meeting the rising demand for reliable power.