How The AI Boom Is Causing A Surge In Demand For Gas Turbines

Your AI chatbot may be powered by these massive natural gas turbines. Hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle, and SpaceX are building huge data centers that run AI models made by companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.

Those data centers require a lot of energy, and in order to meet customer demand and stay competitive, they need it fast, faster than local utilities can provide. So this is what they're buying instead. Behind me is the inside of one gas turbine, which

at length is 31ft long. Where the gas enters it meets the water to create a mini explosion. On the other side is what comes electric energy to power those data centers.

GE is the leader in natural gas turbine production. We're here at the company's largest natural gas turbine plant in South Carolina, where they're expanding at a rapid pace to meet the heightened demand they're seeing from the biggest technology companies in Silicon Valley with interest in power booming.

Sources have shared that executives from nearly every major hyperscaler have walked the floor of this gas turbine factory, the largest in the world. Cnbc learned that these leaders were most interested in deeply understanding industrial design and how power generation works.

When we think of what the world needs for electrification and what we need to power this AI surge that we're living, a lot of that stuff comes right out of this factory. Microsoft just bought seven to power its data center in

Texas at 2.7GW, which is enough electricity to power over 3 million homes. Ge Vernova turbines are already online at AI Colossus One campus in Tennessee and nearly a gigawatt more are being deployed at OpenAI's Stargate project in Texas.

That's according to Cleanview, an organization that tracks data center development. Today, about 20% of our gas power order book is going to a data center. Artificial intelligence type of application.

Demand for these highly complex machines far exceeds supply, even though one turbine can cost north of $250 million. We are booking more into 20, 30 and even 31. The company's stock has skyrocketed, up nearly 60% in the last six months.

Its competitors like caterpillar, Siemens and Mitsubishi have also experienced explosive growth, and the price of turbines have soared as well. A 300% over the last three years, according to estimates from Melius Research.

So business is booming, yes, but opposition to data centers and their use of turbine technology is growing, too. GE says it's working to address these environmental concerns. We also put a lot of time and effort into the sustainability of these machines, and the turbine that you're

looking at here is two times more efficient than a turbine that we would have produced 20 years ago. And more efficient means it creates less pollution over time. Well, you get more power, less fuel consumption, so more bang for your buck.

And experts tell CNBC that turbines alone will not satisfy energy demands of the AI boom. Ultimately, the gas turbine is one solution, and there are a lot of different solutions that ultimately the energy ecosystem will require.

But right now, when you need power at scale and you need firm power, the industrial gas turbine is one of the leading solutions for that.