Erin Griffith, How Do You Measure A.I. Firms’ Gargantuan Energy Plans? In ‘Bragawatts.’ NYTimes, April 26, 2026
The term started more than a decade ago in the energy industry, used to describe power from a solar or wind project that had no chance of being built. Last year, A.I. executives began boasting with increasing boldness about their plans. A.I. watchers, including Waldemar Szlezak, the head of infrastructure at the private equity firm KKR, repurposed the term in a Financial Times column imploring investors to look past the A.I. hype and focus on the reality of today’s power grid. Since then, the term has popped up in media headlines, analyst reports and on social media, typically with a healthy dose of skepticism about how quickly such projects can realistically be built.
The numbers being announced are staggering. Nvidia estimated that as much as $4 trillion would be spent on A.I. infrastructure this decade. OpenAI said it had committed to spend $1.4 trillion to build data centers around the world. (It later lowered that target to a mere $600 billion.)
Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology, a supply chain services firm, said that projects highlighting a gigawatt or more of energy are the most likely to be bragawatts.
“That’s where you can have some scratching of the heads,” he said.
Likewise for any infrastructure projects announced by companies that haven’t already secured the land to build the project, he noted. “That’s definitely the braganomics.”
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