AI Agents Are Thirsty for Power

AI agents—large-language-model systems that autonomously generate and execute hundreds of prompts—are driving the massive expansion of data centers and power infrastructure. OpenAI reported a swarm of over 10,000 agents sending 2.7 million messages to tackle a long-standing math problem, consuming tens of millions of dollars in energy, while the broader industry lacks transparent metrics on agents’ power use. This shift decouples computing demand from end-user activity, enabling potentially thousands of agents to operate continuously.