A groundbreaking new study reveals that artificial intelligence is poised to outpace Bitcoin mining in energy consumption by the start of 2026, with AI projected to account for up to 49% of global data center electricity usage by the end of 2025.
The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Joule estimates AI’s power demand could reach 23 gigawatts—about 201 terawatt-hours annually—while Bitcoin currently consumes around 176 TWh per year.
In 2023 and 2024, the adoption of generative AI applications drew media attention to the increasing power demand for these applications.
Tech companies faced "a power capacity crisis" in their efforts to expand data center capacity as power demand rose to support these applications.
Yet, unlike Bitcoin’s transparent energy footprint, major tech firms like Google and Microsoft remain tight-lipped about the true scale of AI’s electricity appetite, often reporting only aggregate data center figures that obscure the outsized impact of their AI operations.
Leading the charge in this energy-intensive era is Nvidia, which in recent years has consumed between 44% and 48% of the world’s advanced chip packaging capacity, with TSMC doubling its production capabilities in 2025 to keep up with explosive demand.
Despite this, the actual energy used by AI remains difficult to pin down, as companies consistently sidestep detailed disclosure. Alex De Vries-Gao, the PhD candidate behind the study wrote
"Big tech companies are well aware of this trend, as companies such as Google even mention having faced a 'power capacity crisis' in their efforts to expand data centre capacity. At the same time, these companies prefer not to talk about the numbers involved."
For example, Microsoft and Google often cite AI as the main drivers for the increase in electricity consumption and carbon emission, providing only the metrics for their data centers in total without specifically breaking down how much was spent on AI.
With AI's energy appetite growing at lightspeed, it seems that power demand is unlikely to slow down. Nvidia and AMD announced record revenue, while OpenAI recently announced Stargate, a $500 billion data center venture.
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