President Donald Trump did what he so often does on Monday evening: he took to his social media platform to make a sweeping announcement. This time, his focus was on Microsoft and a promise that the tech giant’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence ambitions won’t end up driving Americans’ utility bills even higher through massive new energy demands.
According to the president, he has “never wanted Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers,” a sentiment that certainly sounds reassuring on its face. The problem, of course, is that many Americans are already paying higher electricity bills, and much of that increase has been tied directly to the explosive growth of energy-hungry AI infrastructure. Still, Trump framed his comments as the beginning of a solution rather than an acknowledgment of a problem already in progress. He suggested that whatever arrangement is being teased with Microsoft represents just the first in a broader series of energy-related initiatives involving major technology companies.
In his post, Trump wrote:
“First up is Microsoft, who my team has been working with, and which will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their POWER consumption, in the form of paying higher Utility bills. We are the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and Number One in AI. Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must ‘pay their own way.’ Thank you, and congratulations to Microsoft. More to come soon! President DJT”
As Gizmodo reported last summer, the growing electricity demand created by massive AI data centers—used both to train large models and to run them at scale—has already had a measurable impact on household power bills across the country. On average, consumer energy costs rose by roughly 6.5% year over year at the time of that reporting. In some states, however, the increases were far more dramatic. Maine, for example, saw electricity bills spike by an eye-popping 36.3%, a jump that has been widely attributed to what critics have dubbed an “AI tax.” All the while, major utility providers such as Pacific Gas & Electric have continued to report record profits. Funny how that tends to work out.
At this point, it’s anyone’s guess how Trump and Microsoft actually plan to address the issue. Recently, the president has made a number of gestures toward a kind of headline-friendly economic populism—often centered around deals he can quickly promote as wins. A notable example was his intervention with Novo Nordisk, which resulted in a lower price for Ozempic. That agreement, however, quickly raised eyebrows. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee followed up with a letter to Novo Nordisk asking for details about the still-undisclosed terms of the deal, including concerns about how it might affect the pricing of other medications down the line. But why dwell on such wonky questions when President Deals can celebrate slashing the cost of what he’s affectionately nicknamed “the fat drug”?
Energy prices, however, present a much trickier challenge. Unlike Novo Nordisk, Microsoft doesn’t actually control the prices consumers pay for electricity. One option Trump could theoretically push for would be for Microsoft to directly subsidize energy costs for consumers impacted by its data centers. That might work in practice—but Microsoft, last anyone checked, is not a charity.
That said, there has been recent reporting suggesting Microsoft is already involved in efforts related to power infrastructure. Just six days ago, it was reported that the company is working with the Midcontinent Independent System Operator on a project aimed at modernizing parts of the U.S. power grid using Microsoft’s technology. According to Reuters, Microsoft’s tools are expected to help with forecasting and responding to weather-related grid disruptions, improving transmission line planning, and accelerating certain grid operations.
This doesn’t exactly sound like a silver bullet for dramatically lowering energy costs overnight. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that broader grid modernization could help spread out price spikes more evenly, better integrate underused renewable energy sources, or ease some of the well-known bottlenecks created by the country’s aging electrical infrastructure. The question is whether this—or something similar—is what Trump was actually referring to in his post.
For his own sake, one hopes it isn’t, because the plan sounds suspiciously complex and technocratic—the sort of convoluted policy approach more often associated with flailing Democrats than with the man who proudly touts himself as Mr. Cheap Ozempic.
Gizmodo has reached out to both Microsoft and the White House seeking additional details about the proposed plan. We’ll update the story if and when we hear back.