#485 – David Kirtley: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and the Future of Energy

Bullish:

• $DATACENTER - Electricity demand from data centers is significantly underestimated, with growth potentially far exceeding current predictions of 4-6% annually due to AI compute requirements where power costs dominate

  • “There's been predictions recently from energy institutes that suggest we will have growth that rather than a 2% growth per year in electricity, maybe a four or six percent growth in electricity due to data center use. I think that is probably wildly underestimating where we're moving.”

    David·2:23:34

  • “For AI, the cost of computation asymptotes to the power, to the cost of the electricity.”

    David·2:23:34
• $MSFT - Microsoft has signed a contract with Helion to build a fusion power plant for their data centers, demonstrating commitment to securing future energy supply

  • “In 2023, we signed a deal with Microsoft to build a power plant for Microsoft, for one of their data centers. And this is a power plant that is plugged into the grid, generating electricity from fusion.”

    David·2:11:30