Yuval Bachar knows data centers. Worked on them for them Target,, Microsoft and CiscoBut now, his startup wants to help the Silicon Valley start data centers with lower carbon dioxide emissions.
ECL, Bachar’s startup, builds data centers with hydrogen drive.
Hydrogen is a new source of energy for data centers that are more environmentally friendly, which is more important for technological companies that need to expand their infrastructure quickly, data centers running on hydrogen can be placed in half -time that is required to construct data centers that are centered They connect with the net, Bachar said.
There is one of these data centers with hydrogen drive, with a strong 1 megawatt capacity, next to the ECL seat in Mountain View, California. Twice a month, a diesel truck retreats to a hydrogen in a tank from southern California or northern Nevada. Hydrogen mainly stems from natural gas, which is the best source of energy for electricity in the United States
Bachar and others developing technologies that can stimulate data centers with minimal emissions discuss their work in a new CNBC documentary, which you can watch above.
Ever since Openai published Chatgpt 2022, Amazon,, GoogleMicrosoft and other companies are racing to open data centers that can withstand generative artificial intelligence. These buildings are usually filled with power for power Nvidia Processing graphic units. The GPUs are the standard for training and launching large language models that produce impressive pieces of text with a few words of the human entrance. The heads in industries have seen what Chatgpt can do, and now they want to bring generative AI into their products and internal surgery, sometimes with the hope that they will increase productivity.
If your data center today does not have enough power for the GPU, executives will look somewhere else. Bachar knows that. It’s a great part of his tone.
He likes to say that utilities in some places, such as California and Virginia, cannot currently help if you want a lot of power for the data center. Openai’s Sam Altman has invested hundreds of millions in nuclear startups, but they will not be ready to deliver energy for years, Bachar said.
After establishing ECL in 2021, Bachar reported two buyers who pay, with several other organizations that ordered for future delivery.
“These are microsofts, Facebook, Amazons and Googles of the World … which require all this technology to be set up somewhere, and right now somewhere,” Bachar said, explaining that traditional data centers in the United States cannot be easy change to work with AI.
ECL plans to effectively manage its web locations, but so far it is small, with 10 employees and 18 performers. This is much less than Altman’s investment in nuclear fusion, Helion and starting a fission that he supported, the Okla. Together, the two employ nearly 600 people, representatives said.
Microsoft has committed to work with Helion, and the software company also signed an agreement on the purchase of electricity to restart the nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania in September Three miles island That turned off in 2019.
Nuclear installations inherently ask questions about waste safety and handling, but their carbon -free status makes them attractive. Amazon, Google and Oracle have all explored Small lower -capacity modular reactors than those on the island of three miles.
The latest energy founder and Bret Kugelmass CEO shows the CNBC prototype of a small modular start-up reactor in Washington, DC, January 8, 2025.
Magdalena Petrov
AND Large technological companies are carefully observed by their shows in A and time.
By 2030. Google wants to have net-nile emissions, while Microsoft’s goal is to be carbon negative until that year. Amazon committed to reaching carbon from net-in-darkest by 2040.
“We are working with the main technological companies, as well as various industrial players, to help them integrate our solution plug and play to produce energy production on the spot in data centers,” said Bret Kugelmass, founder and executive director Last Energy, Washington Starting by working on small modular reactors.
Bachar is fascinated by nuclear energy, but he said he would get more of these network facilities, it would take time.
“We have a problem we have to solve right now,” he said.
In addition to his nuclear investments, Openai’s Altman bet on the solar startup Exowatt. There are partners developing data centers that consume more than half of energy available in their countries in some locations, said co -founder and executive director Hannan Happpi.
Geothermal energy also aroused fresh interest in modern AI era, and Google collaborated with startup Fervo energy in Nevada. Tim Latimer, the Startup Executive Director, said Fervo found a way to create electricity gigatas in one place by drilling horizontal holes underground, not a traditional vertical way.
Gigawati are a serious amount, but drilling holes for geothermal plants can be expensive, said Adrian Cockcroft, former Amazon Sustainability CEO.
ECL intends to build a large data center with 1 Gigavat in Texas in the next four years, with the help of hydrogen pipelines. It will probably take so much time to switch to green carbon hydrogen hydrogen using electrolysis that turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, Bachar said.
But the creation of green hydrogen via electrolysis is not cheap, said Kitta Kollura, General Director of Neotriba Ventures.
Should determine the price of green hydrogen, especially now Donald Trump Is the US president again, Bachar said.
Still, every gigavat is important.
2028 The demand for the US data center could come between 74 Gigavata and 132 Gigavat, according to a December report From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Data centers can consist of 6.7% to 12% of total energy consumption in the USA in 2028, compared to 4.4% in 2023, the report states.
“The concern we have is whether we can grow fast enough to solve unprecedented demand for AI data centers,” Bachar said.
