The US and Israel’s war with Iran could also undercut the president’s push to lower electricity bills as supply chains are disrupted and global oil and natural gas prices spike.
Seven leading tech firms – Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon – have signed on to the pledge, Trump administration officials said.
The companies have agreed to build, bring or buy new power generation capacity for data centres, officials said.
The firms said they would commit to paying for new power infrastructure upgrades, and would negotiate rate structures with utility companies at the state level, as well as hire workers local to where data centres are built.
The commitments “will help keep down utility bills very substantially”, Trump said at Wednesday’s meeting with tech executives, while cautioning it would “take a little bit of time to get there”.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters during a briefing that the administration is still committed to leading in the AI boom, but “we’re going to do all of that without raising electricity prices for Americans”.
At the same time, Trump acknowledged that tech companies “need some PR help” amid a backlash to data centres in local communities nationwide.
The tech pledge may be difficult to enforce, said John Quigley, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.