Jhet Borja Social Links Navigation Freelance Writer Jhet Borja is a serial hobbyist who was taking apart toys from childhood and sketching inventions. He now loves doing DIY projects ranging from designing custom 3D-printed parts, building PCs and keyboards, all the way to woodworking. If he's not getting his hands dirty, he's probably brainstorming his next project.
bit_user Calling it a "dividend" raises interesting questions. Companies normally pay those only when they're profitable, which new datacenter builds presumably won't be, for at least a while, since the construction costs first need to be recouped. Also, about this: The article said: The Trump Administration had ordered these companies to make their own electricity, as we’ve covered previously. Excess electricity from their generation could be used to further lower the electricity cost for the locals, including a recently passed act that orders data centers to shoulder the cost for grid upgrades to avoid taking it from the taxes of local communities. The kind of power generation that datacenters are installing in the short-run is primarily using noisy, polluting, and inefficient gas-powered generators (as reported on this site). So, I think that's probably not such a "win" for locals, particularly if they live very nearby, when you compare it to the electricity they usually get from conventional power plants. Just about anything else that datacenters do for power generation is going to take quite a bit longer to come online. So, that's definitely not a near-term fix. Reply
thestryker Much like everything to this point companies will say what they need to while doing whatever they want to. Without actual requirements companies have no incentive to go outside the path of least resistance. Reply
John Kiser bit_user said: Calling it a "dividend" raises interesting questions. Companies normally pay those only when they're profitable, which new datacenter builds presumably won't be, for at least a while, since the construction costs first need to be recouped. Also, about this: The kind of power generation that datacenters are installing in the short-run is primarily using noisy, polluting, and inefficient gas-powered generators (as reported on this site). So, I think that's probably not such a "win" for locals, particularly if they live very nearby, when you compare it to the electricity they usually get from conventional power plants. Just about anything else that datacenters do for power generation is going to take quite a bit longer to come online. So, that's definitely not a near-term fix. The data centers themselves could be so long as they house multiple companies. AI companies themselves on the other hand are frequently losing money Reply
LordVile A mandate he has no power to issue or enforce. Which he will immediately backtrack on in two weeks Reply
derekullo What stops companies from buying up land and vacant housing near data centers to farm this "dividend"? Reply
bit_user derekullo said: What stops companies from buying up land and vacant housing near data centers to farm this "dividend"? The dividend probably won't be big enough to make that a profitable endeavor. Reply
COLGeek The "mandate" is really a gesture with little actual benefit to anyone. @bit_user 's thoughts are spot on, in my opinion. The choice of words suggests a benefit that will likely never be achieved, thus no dividends/payments of any sort (not even accounting for corporate bookkeeping). The depreciation of assets and operating costs will ensure a "zero sum" outcome. These notions should also be applied to the idea of AI companies offering shares to the US (any country for that matter) government. Some gifts come with strings attached, especially once taxpayers have a stake in the outcome. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/trump-announces-mandate-for-data-centers-to-pay-dividends-to-the-local-community-hopes-to-win-more-data-center-supporters-through-dividend-scheme#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- ASML and other critical semiconductor equipment suppliers expedite shipments to Musk's Terafab
- NVIDIA Cosmos Opens New Tools to Train, Evaluate and Deploy World Models
- AMD and Intel will work together to create a single PyTorch code path for AI inference on CPUs
- 4TB Samsung 990 Pro M.2 SSD falls 27%, hits 20 cents per gigabyte
- Trump announces mandate forcing AI data centers to pay energy dividends to the local community
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.