NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said in a podcast interview with Joe Rogan on Wednesday that the future of artificial intelligence will be constrained not by chips but by electricity, and he predicted that tech giants would begin powering their data centers with their own nuclear reactors.
Huang said that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is running headfirst into a new constraint: electricity.
When Rogan asked whether energy had become the biggest bottleneck for AI development, Huang responded without hesitation: “That’s the bottleneck,” emphasizing that the availability of electricity, rather than GPUs, would determine how far and how fast the industry can scale.
Rogan further pointed out that Google was already building nuclear facilities to power their AI operations.
Huang said that while he hadn’t heard specific progress yet, he predicted that small nuclear reactors would become commonplace. “I think you’re going to see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors within the next six or seven years,” he said.
Huang told Rogan that the reactors he envisioned were not large traditional nuclear power plants but compact systems capable of producing 'hundreds of megawatts' of electricity. These would be installed near the companies that need them, enabling tech firms to generate power on-site instead of relying solely on the grid.
“We’ll all become power generators,” Huang said, likening this to a farm that produces its own resources. He added that locally produced nuclear power could ease pressure on the grid, provide a reliable supply, and even feed excess electricity back into surrounding communities.
Rogan described this strategy as “the smartest approach,” and Huang agreed, saying that as AI workloads continue to surge, developing the necessary power generation capacity and contributing when possible will be crucial.
Huang's prediction aligns with emerging trends. In 2024, Google announced plans to purchase electricity from small modular reactor developer Kairos Power, with the goal of having the first advanced reactor operational by 2030.
Kairos signed an agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2025, marking the first time a U.S. utility committed to purchasing electricity from next-generation reactors.
Editor/Joryn
