A special look inside GE VernovaThe world’s largest gas turbine plant in Greenville, South Carolina, provides new evidence that artificial intelligence is going strong.
Inside, engineers work with factory workers to speed up production of this complex machine. The company hired 200 workers last year, and another 300 are expected to start working at the plant by the end of the year.
Driving growth is AI.
Hyperscalers – companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft again The Oracle – lined up to buy the company’s gas engines. As AI data centers require large amounts of energy and constraints on the emerging grid, these companies are increasingly relying on independent energy sources, such as gas turbines.
“Right now, when you need power at scale and you need solid power, the industrial gas turbine is one of the best solutions for that,” Pablo Koziner., GE Vernova’s chief commercial and operations officer told CNBC.
The AI opportunity encourages leaders from OpenAI and other companies to gain a deeper understanding of industrial design and power generation.
Executives at nearly every major hyperscaler have walked the factory floor, according to a person familiar with the tour, who asked not to be identified because the details are not public.
The turbines are huge, 31 feet tall and weigh 280 tons. A single turbine can power nearly half a million homes.
“When we think about what the world needs to electrify and what we need to power this AI movement in our lives, a lot of things come out of this factory,” Koziner said.
Microsoft recently bought seven of them to power its data center in Texas. At 2.7 gigawatts, that’s enough electricity to power about 3 million homes.
GE Vernova turbines are already online at Elon Musk’s XAI Colossus 1 campus in Tennessee, and about an additional gigawatt is being deployed at OpenAI’s Stargate project in Texas, according to Cleanview, an organization that tracks data center development.
Demand for these machines far outstrips supply, with the order book full until 2029. Koziner added that the company is booking more for 2030 and even 2031.
“Today, about 20% of our electric power order book is going to the data center, a type of artificial intelligence application,” he said.
A single turbine can cost more than $250 million, according to industry estimates. The price has increased by 300% in the last 3 years, according to Melius analysts. The price hike underscores why AI capital budgets continue to rise, a top concern among tech investors.
That spending has been beneficial for GE Vernova, whose stock has gained nearly 60% in the past six months.
Society’s pushback on data center development and growing environmental concerns may challenge the creation of AI.
GE Vernova said it is working to make its wind turbines more environmentally friendly.
“We also put a lot of time and energy into the sustainability of these machines,” Koziner said. “And this turbine you’re looking at here is twice as efficient as a turbine we could have produced 20 years ago.”
GE Vernova stock chart.
