Anthropic announced Wednesday it will absorb electricity price increases caused by its data center expansion, joining Microsoft and OpenAI in addressing consumer energy cost concerns.
The AI company behind Claude committed to covering grid upgrade expenses needed to connect its facilities. Anthropic will pay higher monthly electricity charges to prevent infrastructure costs from reaching household bills, according to company statements.
"The U.S. needs to build AI infrastructure at scale to stay competitive, but the costs of powering our models should fall on Anthropic, not everyday Americans," CEO Dario Amodei said.
Anthropic plans to bring new power generation online to match data center electricity demands rather than purchasing credits or contracting existing capacity. Where new generation isn't available, the company will work with utilities to estimate and offset demand-driven price effects.
The commitment applies to Anthropic-owned data centers in Mitchell County, Texas; Niagara County, New York; and southeast Louisiana. The company acknowledged leased capacity from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google presents different challenges, stating it's "exploring further ways to address our own workload's effects on prices" for those arrangements.
Data centers currently consume approximately 4.4% of U.S. electrical power, according to 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research. That figure could reach 12% by 2028 as AI infrastructure expands.
Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University experts project electricity generation prices could increase roughly 25% in markets with concentrated data center growth by 2030.
Anthropic's announcement follows similar commitments from Microsoft and OpenAI last month. Microsoft pledged to pay utility rates covering its power costs and collaborate with local utilities to expand supply when needed.
Political pressure on AI companies intensified as electricity rates became a midterm election issue. New York state senators introduced legislation Friday to pause new data center permits and require impact minimization on electricity and gas rates.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and other Democrats proposed a bill in mid-January requiring AI corporations to fund data center expansion electricity costs and related grid infrastructure.
The Trump administration reportedly drafted a voluntary agreement committing major AI companies to offset household electricity price spikes. Administration officials joined bipartisan governors last month to pressure PJM, the nation's largest regional grid operator, to address rising costs.
PJM Interconnection, serving 13 Northeastern states, plans summer price increases exceeding 20% citing data center demand spikes. The grid operator's 2024 auction saw power plant rates jump 800% from $28 to $269 per megawatt-day.
Anthropic also announced investments in power consumption reduction technologies including curtailment systems for peak demand periods and liquid cooling adoption. The company will fund research into data center power optimization and grid efficiency tools.
The AI firm previously announced a $50 billion investment in American compute architecture in November 2025 through partnership with data center builder FluidStack. Amazon invested $2.75 billion in Anthropic in March 2024, maintaining a minority stake without board representation. Blackstone recently invested another $200 million in Anthropic, bringing its total stake to nearly $1 billion.
Anthropic's Opus 4.6 model released last week introduced "agent teams" capable of splitting larger tasks into segmented jobs. The update offers 1 million tokens of context comparable to the company's Sonnet models.
Local opposition to energy-intensive data centers has canceled or delayed projects nationwide. Rising electricity rates emerged as a top election priority amid concerns about water usage and environmental impacts.
Anthropic stated it will work with local leaders on education programs and small business support alongside its infrastructure commitments. The company called for federal permitting reform and accelerated transmission development to facilitate new energy deployment.
"Company-level action isn't enough," Anthropic noted. "Keeping electricity affordable requires systemic change."
