AI data centres worldwide reached a power capacity comparable to New York State at peak demand in 2025, which Stanford's AI Index puts at 29.6 gigawatts
The Stanford AI Index 2026 report states that AI data centers globally reached a power capacity of 29.6 gigawatts in 2025. This capacity is noted to be comparable to the peak demand for power in New York State. The report tracks developments in AI research and development, including the infrastructure and environmental footprint supporting it.
Verified 2026-08-04
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Comparing AI's power draw to a whole state makes clear why electricity has become central to the AI story.
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- American Electric Power, one of the largest US utilities, which counts hyperscalers and manufacturers among its new large customers, signed fresh load commitments in the third quarter of 2026 and now expects its contracted extra load to reach 84 GW by 2031 AEP signed 15 GW of new load commitments in a single quarter
- OpenAI does not disclose GPT-4o's resource footprint, so Stanford's 2026 AI Index Report turned to independent researchers' estimates of the water needed to cool the servers behind it — as much as 1.58 million kilolitres a year — more than 1.2 million people drink annually
- AI training's carbon footprint has scaled by orders of magnitude. Stanford's 2026 AI Index estimates that training AlexNet in 2012 produced about 0.01 tons of CO2 equivalent, while training xAI's Grok 4 in 2025 produced roughly 72,816 tons of CO2 equivalent — over 1,150 times the lifetime emissions of an average car
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