Top tech companies turn to hydrogen and nuclear energy for AI data centers

Yuval Bachar knows data centers. He's worked on them for Meta , Microsoft and Cisco , but now, his startup is looking to help Silicon Valley run data centers with lower carbon dioxide emissions. ECL, Bachar's startup, builds hydrogen-powered data centers. Hydrogen is a novel energy source for data centers that is more eco-friendly, and more importantly for tech companies that need to quickly expand their infrastructure, they can be placed into service in half the time that it takes to construct data centers that connect to the grid, Bachar said. There's one of these hydrogen-powered data centers, with a measly 1-megawatt capacity, next to ECL's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Twice a month, a diesel truck hauls in hydrogen in a tank from Southern California or northern Nevada. The hydrogen mainly derives from natural gas, which is the top energy source for electricity in the U.S. Bachar and others developing technologies that can fuel data centers with minimal emissions ... Read full article.