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Meeting with Microsoft ( MSFT ), Meta, Anthropic slated for March 4

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Pledge expected to build on prior Microsoft ( MSFT ) commitments

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Trump says told Big Tech they must build own power plants

By Jarrett Renshaw and Laila Kearney

Feb 25 (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday it

will host leading data center and artificial intelligence

companies next week, with attendees expected ​to include

Microsoft ( MSFT ), Amazon ( AMZN ), Anthropic and Meta

Platforms ( META ) to formalize a deal to shield consumers ‌from

rising power costs.

The meeting, scheduled for March 4 and first reported by

Reuters, is expected to advance an initiative President Donald

Trump unveiled during his State of the Union address on

Tuesday. Trump said ⁠he had told major technology firms they must

build their own power plants to run the rapidly expanding fleet

of data centers and other ⁠artificial intelligence

infrastructure.

The pledge under discussion is expected to resemble

commitments offered earlier this year by Microsoft ( MSFT ) to invest ‌in

new electricity generation and efficiency ‌measures.

"Major tech companies will join President Trump at the White

House next week to formally sign the Rate Payer Protection

Pledge that he announced during his historic State of the Union

address," said ​Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman.

HIGH POWER PRICES MAY BE A VULNERABILITY

The ‌Trump administration supports efforts to advance

artificial intelligence in competition with China, but the

impact of the proliferation of AI data centers on power prices

has become a potential vulnerability for Republicans ahead of

the November midterm elections.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) did not say whether ​it would attend next week or

sign any new pledge. "We appreciate the ​Administration's work to

ensure ‌that data centers don't contribute to higher electricity

prices for consumers," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's ( MSFT ) vice chair

and president.

An Amazon ( AMZN ) spokesperson said the company planned to attend

the meeting and participate in the effort.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment.

"American families shouldn't pick ⁠up the tab for AI,"

Anthropic spokesperson Sarah Heck wrote on X. "In support of the

(White House) rate payer protection pledge, Anthropic has

committed ⁠to covering 100% of electricity price increases that

consumers face from our data centers."

AI RACE A FOCUS FOR TRUMP

Trump has made the global AI race, and securing the vast

amounts of electricity needed to power it, a primary focus of

his second term. That agenda, however, has become politically

precarious ahead of the midterms as energy demand growth from

data centers inflates power bills across much of the country.

The proliferation of giant data center projects has met ⁠with

increasing local ‌and state protests over concerns of rising

bills and pollution. Some data center plans, or related power

projects, ‌have been cancelled or postponed following local

opposition.

Last month, the Trump administration and several governors

from states in the country's largest electric grid, PJM

Interconnection, released a ⁠framework for addressing surging

power bills in the region.

PJM covers the world's biggest concentration of data

centers. Projections for a massive increase in the number of

centers connecting to the grid have led some power costs in the

market to surge by about 1,000% in less than two years.

Part of the White House plan to rein in power costs tied to

data centers will build on the PJM framework, two sources told

Reuters.

Addressing rising costs from data centers is complicated,

and the pledges are no easy way to rein in prices at a time of

ballooning data center demand and utility spending, said Ari

Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the

Harvard ​Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program.

"The 'Ratepayer Protection Pledge' is meaningless until we

see utilities file contracts with state and federal regulators

that allocate all costs of serving data centers to data

centers," Peskoe said.

That effort will be particularly difficult in PJM, Peskoe

said, where utilities are already spending tens of ​billions of

dollars on power projects to supply data centers - costs ‌that

will be spread out among the 13-state grid's ratepayers.