Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Okay, question two from Brad. How do you think about competition for power from things like fuel cells, gas turbines, aeroderivate turbines, orbital compute, and other sort of IPPs, independent power producers?
A We need all of it. We need all of it. We, we, you know, the fuel cells and, you know, the caterpillar solar turbines, these are fantastic bridge solutions, but the cost to run these things, the LCOE is like through the roof, but you know, look, to build a fifty billion dollar data center, you don't want it to sit idle for three years waiting for your base load CCGT, so you do whatever it takes, you don't give a crap what you pay for that bridge solution, and so we're finding ways through fuel cells, through, ah, you know, caterpillar solar turbines, hopefully through orbital data centers, Where we can alleviate this, because I want AI to happen in a really big way, and we're gonna need all the above.
AI assessment note: “We need all of it... these are fantastic bridge solutions”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 3 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.85
Q But everything we need is in the earth below us. It's just that we only mine the stuff that's on the surface is the general thesis. Is there a set of innovations that you think are coming to market that are gonna ultimately unleash more productivity than we see? Because we're still using the same technology we did a hundred years ago to get this stuff out of the ground.
A For some commodities, yes. You brought up rare earths. So, so coming out of the 14th century, there are these guys called alchemists. Remember then? They said they could turn lead into gold. And back then, the periodic table was just four elements. There was water, there was fire, there was air, and there was earth. Now, fire, you could figure out what it was. The air was pretty pure, the water was pure, but every time they saw something in the earth, they didn't know what it was. They called it a rare earth. And so rare earths are everywhere, and the technology to extract rare earths is going to allow us to have a huge abundance of them, but the problem is processing them. That's the problem. The Chinese have all the technological know-how to convert what you take out of the ground and convert it into something that we can use. And so there's always gonna be, you know, some element of conversion that you're gonna need. With something like copper, the market is so big that it's really difficult to find a technology that could solve that problem overnight.
AI assessment note: “For some commodities, yes. You brought up rare earths.”
