Anthropic says it’s going to foot the bill for electricity price increases tied to its data centers.
“We will pay for 100% of the grid upgrades needed to interconnect our data centers,” Anthropic said in a blog post published Wednesday, adding that it will absorb costs that might otherwise be passed on to American households.
Anthropic said it will secure additional power to avoid pushing up electricity prices and invest in “grid optimization tools” designed to reduce strain and keep prices low.
“The country needs to build new data centers quickly to maintain its competitiveness on AI and national security,” Anthropic said. “But AI companies shouldn’t leave American ratepayers to pick up the tab.”
Anthropic’s pledge comes months after the company said it is investing $50 billion in AI infrastructure in the US, beginning with data centers in Texas and New York.
Tech giants are pouring staggering sums into AI infrastructure as they race to expand data center capacity, a buildout that has drawn scrutiny over rising electricity costs.
In November, Meta said it would invest $600 billion in the US “to support AI technology, infrastructure, and workforce expansion.” Apple said in August it would add another $100 billion to its US infrastructure spending, bringing its total investment to $600 billion.
Meanwhile, utility bills are climbing. Electric and gas utilities sought $31 billion in rate increases from state regulators last year, more than double the $15 billion requested the year before, according to a study published last month by PowerLines, a nonprofit that advocates for utility customers. Many utilities have cited power demand from data centers as the key factor for rate increases.
President Donald Trump has urged Big Tech to prevent data centers from pushing up electricity costs.
“I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers,” Trump wrote last month in a post on Truth Social.
The “big technology companies who build them,” the president said, “must pay their own way.”
Microsoft last month introduced similar measures, saying it would pay utility rates high enough to cover the cost of its data centers’ electricity use and reduce the impact of its data center expansion on local residents.
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