Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Amazon also announcing half a billion dollar investment in nuclear
Speaker 2: clean energy. Here to discuss it, Matt Goarman, CEO of AWS,
Speaker 2: and Matt welcome back to Blimberg Technology. It's so interesting
Speaker 2: to see that. Thank you to see the hyperscaler is
Speaker 2: so focused on this. I think we start with y SMRs, right,
Speaker 2: that's a very specific avenue to go down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think SMRs are a great new technology and they're
Speaker 3: an important part of the energy landscape that we're looking at.
Speaker 3: We made a five hundred million dollar investment in a
Speaker 3: company called x Energy that are really I think they're
Speaker 3: one of the leaders in this space, and they're really
Speaker 3: pushing on the technology SMRs.
Speaker 1: They have a couple of advantages.
Speaker 3: They're able to be constructed in a smaller footprint, which
Speaker 3: means you can put them.
Speaker 1: Closer to where the energy needs to be.
Speaker 3: They're also incredibly safe and easily manufactural, and so they're
Speaker 3: very promising technology and we're quite excited about our investments
Speaker 3: in this space and the partnerships that we have coming up.
Speaker 4: Small modular reactors SMRs for those getting in the acronym lingo.
Speaker 4: Matt it's great to have you. What about other deals,
Speaker 4: I mean, is this the first of many?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so a couple of details on the things
Speaker 3: that we announced yesterday. One, we have this investment with
Speaker 3: x Energy, who's a producer of these. But we also
Speaker 3: have announced two partnerships with utilities, and so we're actually
Speaker 3: well down the path, ongoing and actually implementing some of
Speaker 3: these deals. So we have a partnership with Dominion in
Speaker 3: Virginia to go implement an SMR as part of their
Speaker 3: energy footprint here in Virginia, and with Energy Northwest in
Speaker 3: Washington and Oregon, and our goal is to deliver more
Speaker 3: than five gigawatts of nuclear energy. We think that it's
Speaker 3: a fantastic opportunity for us to keep pushing on the
Speaker 3: carbon energy footprint that's needed as we continue to scale
Speaker 3: around the country.
Speaker 2: Matt, if you're well down the path, and based on
Speaker 2: what you just said, do you have a clear line
Speaker 2: of sight on what the dollar per mega what hour
Speaker 2: is going to be out of those facilities.
Speaker 1: We don't know that yet.
Speaker 3: We're still we are still early and we're still learning
Speaker 3: many of these technologies for these reactors or probably won't
Speaker 3: come online until twenty thirty, so.
Speaker 1: We'll still be learning there, but we feel that as
Speaker 1: we scale and in.
Speaker 3: The fullness of time, these energy sources are going to
Speaker 3: be quite competitive from a cost perspective, and it's one
Speaker 3: of the reasons that we're so excited about them.
Speaker 2: Would you bring back a full nuclear plant like three
Speaker 2: Mile Island in Pennsylvania And if so, which.
Speaker 3: One, well that I wouldn't have done that one in particular.
Speaker 3: But we actually have a partnership with Talent where we're
Speaker 3: bringing more energy online in Pennsylvania and that's we're actually
Speaker 3: the very first company to announce a deal with Talent
Speaker 3: several months ago. And so I think that some of
Speaker 3: these large nuclear plants are also excellent source of energy
Speaker 3: and they're an important part of that. And as I said,
Speaker 3: I think small modular reactors are going to be a
Speaker 3: component of what we need for a carbon free energy world,
Speaker 3: but large nuclear plants are going to be an important
Speaker 3: part of that too. And we've said that we'll take
Speaker 3: as much as almost a gigawot of power that we're
Speaker 3: bringing back online from this large plant in Pennsylvania, where
Speaker 3: we'll also be building data centers nearby. So I think
Speaker 3: it's all an important part of the portfolio as we
Speaker 3: move to decarbonize the energy.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the decarbonization because back when you announce
Speaker 4: that deal in March with Susquehanna, you talked about how
Speaker 4: still the aim is to be by twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: one hundred percent renewable energy. Is that attainable with a
Speaker 4: sudden desire to have AI and the energy that goes
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, In fact, we announced that this year we hit
Speaker 3: one hundred percent carbon free energy in our systems, and
Speaker 3: I think that now our goal is how do we
Speaker 3: as we look at all of the energy demands that
Speaker 3: the business and the world frankly needs, how do we
Speaker 3: get to a continued path on growing carbon free energy.
Speaker 3: And so that's what a lot of these deals are about,
Speaker 3: is for the future.
Speaker 1: As we look.
Speaker 3: At power that we're going to need in twenty five,
Speaker 3: twenty seven, thirty, twenty forty, how do we make sure
Speaker 3: that we have a ramp of power so that as
Speaker 3: the energy needs grow, whether they're from electric vehicles or
Speaker 3: from companies increasingly digitizing, or from generative AI, that we
Speaker 3: have enough carbon free energy to support them. And so
Speaker 3: it's really a long term view that we have and
Speaker 3: part of this is on that long term view, how
Speaker 3: we continue.
Speaker 1: To have enough power well into the future.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the short term view if we come
Speaker 4: for a minute, Matt, though, because right here, right now,
Speaker 4: do you have the power that is necessary from the
Speaker 4: places you want to be getting it from.
Speaker 1: We work really hard to make sure that we do.
Speaker 3: Our businesses continuing to grow rapidly, and we're adding new
Speaker 3: power and new data centers all of the time, and
Speaker 3: so we continue we look further out. We have power
Speaker 3: that we're adding in twenty four, power that we're adding
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five, and continue out. And as you
Speaker 3: may have heard, over the last five years, Amazon has
Speaker 3: been the single biggest purchaser of renewable power contracts in
Speaker 3: the world every year for the last five years, and
Speaker 3: so we.
Speaker 1: Continue to do that.
Speaker 3: We continue to add power to our footprint, and we
Speaker 3: plan multiple years out because these projects that we go
Speaker 3: and launch they take many years to come online, and
Speaker 3: so we have lots of plans and we continue to
Speaker 3: grow as the needs of our customers grow.
Speaker 2: Matt, Will you have any Blackwell online by the end
Speaker 2: of this year?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, in videos, timelines have shifted on that and so
Speaker 3: and so. We have samples in the lab and we're
Speaker 3: working on them right now, but production qualities are production
Speaker 3: quantities we expect to be early next year.
Speaker 1: We work very.
Speaker 3: Closely with in Vidio on GPUs and super excited about
Speaker 3: that launch. And in Video's own large research cluster is
Speaker 3: actually launching in as so we'll have the first production
Speaker 3: qualities will be in AWS when they're ready, But so
Speaker 3: right now we're working with them and we have early samples,
Speaker 3: but as they get their yields up from the respind
Speaker 3: of the Blackwell chip, it'll probably be early next year
Speaker 3: before we really get production samples in real volume.
Speaker 4: Another partnership then Anthropics work on the chips. How is
Speaker 4: that going?
Speaker 1: Briefly fantastic.
Speaker 3: Anthropic continues to deliver fantastic new models. Their Sonnet three
Speaker 3: to five model is one of the most powerful ones
Speaker 3: that is out there today and customers really enjoying using
Speaker 3: it on a variety of tasks. I think the reasoning
Speaker 3: is industry and world class and a bunch of the
Speaker 3: capabilities that enterprises are able to deliver, and the value
Speaker 3: they get from those models is really it's fun to
Speaker 3: watch and we really enjoy that partnership and we continue
Speaker 3: to expect it to go for a long time.
Speaker 4: Matt Carman, AWS CEO, we appreciate your time. Thank you,