Google

includes Google DeepMind, Google TPU, Google Search, Google Nest, Google Cloud, Google Maps, Google Trends, Google Colaboratory, Google Finance, Google Flights, Google Images, Google Labs

41 statements across 17 episodes · 23 bullish · 5 bearish · 12 people on the record · first statement Dec 16, 2021 by Mark Cupta · said 235 times in 59 episodes since 2021 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Shayle Kann (82), Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros (32), Brad Langley (19), Emily Kirsch (12), Amin Vahdat (11), Astrid Atkinson (8), Stephen Lacey (7), Nat Bullard (7)

tap a year for its mentions
00501010020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
01020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
00410820202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 87 mentions in 12 episodes 7 per episode
2025 58 mentions in 18 episodes 3 per episode
2024 24 mentions in 12 episodes 2 per episode
2023 36 mentions in 11 episodes 3 per episode
2022 22 mentions in 3 episodes 7 per episode
2021 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Google, oldest first

Dec 16, 2021 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Major tech companies will achieve true zero-carbon power without using offsets
“So there is a future In my opinion, for those companies to get to not just net zero on a on a basis of using offsets or other things, but actually truly having zero carbon power”
Mark Cupta Dec 16, 2021 ▶ 22:40 Quantum computing could be a critical climate solution
Jul 28, 2022 positive
Assertion Supported
Palmer: Google matched 100% of its electricity with renewables in 2017
“And we did meet that goal of a hundred percent renewable What I think is even. In 2017, exactly.”
Neha Palmer Jul 28, 2022 ▶ 14:51 Watt It Takes: TeraWatt Infrastructure CEO Neha Palmer
Aug 4, 2023
Opinion
Rayford Smith: 24/7 carbon-free energy is vastly harder than 100% renewables
“This is a fundamental sea change in how we do it, and it's considerably harder than what we had been accomplished up to that date.”
Rayford Smith Aug 4, 2023 ▶ 2:42 With Great Power: What other industries can teach utilities about innovation
Aug 4, 2023
Disclosure
Smith: Google dynamically shifted computing loads based on grid constraints and carbon
“When I was at Google, one of the things we did was we created the ability to basically forecast forward power prices grid constraints, carbon content and then dynamically move our load around to take advantage of that. So if there was a storm and there was goi…”
Rayford Smith Aug 4, 2023 ▶ 13:58 With Great Power: What other industries can teach utilities about innovation
Aug 4, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rayford Smith: Google sometimes waited seven years for data center transmission access
“I can tell you when we were building data centers at Google, you know, in some places it took us seven years to get transmission access. In other places it took us, you know, 18 months to two years.”
Rayford Smith Aug 4, 2023 ▶ 24:51 With Great Power: What other industries can teach utilities about innovation
Nov 9, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Kann: Google signed the first US enhanced geothermal PPA with Fervo
“The first PPA that ever got signed for enhanced geothermal in the United States from Fervo was with Google.”
Shayle Kann Nov 9, 2023 ▶ 11:14 Mailbag episode! Interest rates, carbon dioxide removal, load growth, and more
Feb 15, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Bullard: Google data center power usage effectiveness has plateaued since 2021
“PUE is now pretty much flat when you adjusted for seasons since the 21. This is data from Google's data centers, and they're about as transparent as you can get with this figure.”
Nat Bullard Feb 15, 2024 ▶ 39:06 More 2024 trends: ESG, carbon certifications, curtailment, and AI
Jun 13, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Janus: Hyperscaler climate targets are probably not achievable on time
“And so there is, I think at this point, a point of coming to grips with the fact that those targets are probably not achievable in the time horizons that they had all set.”
Brian Janous Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 37:59 Under the hood of data center power demand
Feb 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Google and TPG inject $800M into Intersect Power for co-located generation
“Intersect partnered with TPG, which is a big investment firm, and Google on a partnership that initially will inject about eight hundred million dollars into Intersect to develop solar and storage and wind and some gas co-located with data centers in the Unite…”
Shayle Kann Feb 13, 2025 ▶ 4:30 The case for colocating data centers and generation
May 9, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Small modular reactors for tech companies fit on 100 acres or less
“The smaller plant sizes, the small modular reactors you're looking at for Google, can probably fit about a hundred acres or so or less.”
Chris Colbert May 9, 2025 ▶ 28:53 The U.S. nuclear groundswell
May 9, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Google deal directly funds Elemental Power's upfront nuclear project development costs
“They made investment, you know, mostly in the technology, but increasingly as this deal we're doing now with Google is in the upfront development, which is really the key part that needs to be re-risked.”
Chris Colbert May 9, 2025 ▶ 10:57 The U.S. nuclear groundswell
May 9, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Google and Elemental Power announce 1.8 GW US nuclear portfolio
“Elemental came out of stealth this week and announced a big partnership with Google to develop a three-site portfolio of at least 1.8 gigawatts of new nuclear in the U.S.”
Shayle Kann May 9, 2025 ▶ 4:23 The U.S. nuclear groundswell
May 29, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Kann: Fervo Energy holds PPAs with utilities and Google for hundreds of MW
“Fervo Energy, notably, has PPAs, both with utilities and with Google, for hundreds of megawatts of new development.”
Shayle Kann May 29, 2025 ▶ 3:25 How geothermal gets built
Aug 28, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Kann: Google partnered with TVA and Michigan Power for demand response
“Google actually made a big announcement about doing this at their data centers just a few weeks ago. They've announced that they've partnered with two utilities, Michigan Power and TVA, to introduce demand response via workload flexibility in their data center…”
Shayle Kann Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 3:11 The mechanics of data center flexibility
Aug 28, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Sivaram: Google shifted video indexing to nighttime to lower carbon load
“Google also, by the way, has exploited temporal flexibility. There was a Paper, a post they put out a couple years ago, a friend of mine, Varun Mehra, wrote it about moving video indexing operations to nighttime in order to reduce load during periods, as you m…”
Varun Sivaram Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 20:29 The mechanics of data center flexibility
Aug 28, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Sivaram: Modern AI data centers convert 90% of power into compute
“Historically, a data center might lose 33% of the power or use it, 33% of that power for non-IT or information technology uses, and the remaining 66 or 67% goes into actual computations. Nowadays, with the increasingly customized design of these AI factories a…”
Varun Sivaram Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 5:14 The mechanics of data center flexibility
Oct 15, 2025 negative
Insight
Energy startup buyouts bring pay cuts, not tech-style windfalls
“You know, about five startups later and three buyouts later, I realized the startup world in energy was much different than Google. It was more of a pay decline. Type of buyout rather than a, you know, million dollar buyout you see in the tech world.”
Jamie Daggett Oct 15, 2025 ▶ 2:13 How insurance can narrow the valley of death [partner content]
Dec 18, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Google achieves a data center power usage effectiveness near 1.1
“Google's PUE is close to 1.1, which is to say for every watt going to compute, there's an additional .1 watts going to the overheads of power delivery or cooling or whatever.”
Dr. Ben Lee Dec 18, 2025 ▶ 8:59 Will inference move to the edge?
Apr 9, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Google reached 1 GW of flexible data center capacity across five utilities
“Google now, ah, has reached a gigawatt of contracted flexible capacity across, I think, five different utility territories, at least some of whom, ah, are willing to provide some of these benefits.”
Varun Sivaram Apr 9, 2026 ▶ 15:14 The rise of flexible data centers
Apr 23, 2026
Assertion Supported
Vahdat: AI accelerator power density is 100x higher than storage
“And the difference between storage and compute was at most 10 X. The difference between storage and accelerators are approaching a hundred X.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 35:13 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Google reached 1 GW in utility demand response agreements by March 2026
“In March, we actually hit a significant milestone in agreements with utilities for a gigawatt of demand response across our fleet.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 15:18 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Vahdat: Many Google data centers target four nines of availability
“Many of our data centers aim for four nines of, I mean, minutes of downtime a year maximum, which as you said has a large amount of costs associated with it.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 12:50 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Vahdat: Google trades uptime for capacity in customer co-design
“Without saying too much, it's happening. I would say there's actually the co-design there with our customers at Google has been one of our sources of significant efficiency.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 14:01 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 positive
Insight
Vahdat: The AI industry should accept lower-reliability power delivery
“No, it is not intrinsic and we should be thinking about lower reliability power delivery overall.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 12:16 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Vahdat: Google co-designs TPUs directly with power sources, buildings, and Gemini
“In other words, for us, for let's say our TPUs, we co-design them with a building. We co-design them with the power generation source. We co-design them with the DeepMind team that builds Gemini models. So it's the software above, the models above that, the ch…”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 24:08 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Vahdat: Interactive AI models will require geographically distributed inference infrastructure
“So as these services become more interactive, as they become more efficient, and that, that is still going to be a journey. We're not there today. You're going to want to have geographic locality. That's also going to impact reliability, because again, you can…”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 9:29 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026
Disclosure
Vahdat: Google does not use blank workloads to smooth training power draw
“We don't do this, but yes, others.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 36:05 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Google uses behind-the-meter power while waiting years for grid transmission
“We like behind the meter if it means that we get the capacity up most quickly, but we're always going to look to invest with the utilities to bring the transmission. Maybe it's a year after. Maybe it's two years after, right?”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 16:21 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 neutral
Insight
Vahdat: AI inference does not require gigawatt-scale data center capacity
“You don't strictly need a gigawatt of capacity to be able to do useful work. You probably don't even need a hundred megawatts of capacity. It gets a little bit more interesting than that because of, let's say, co-located compute and storage and networking and …”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 6:25 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026
Insight
Vahdat: Dominant compute costs force data centers to sacrifice fungibility
“If compute is not the dominant portion of your cost, you actually want to have flexibility and fungibility. When compute becomes a more dominant portion of your cost, you now actually are thinking, okay, what am I going to do for this year, next year, and the …”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 34:56 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Vahdat: AI footprint will favor many medium data centers over gigawatt hubs
“It'll really come down to geographic locality and probably a medium number of medium-sized data centers. Sorry for the whatever lack of precision there, but medium number of medium-sized data centers augmented with a small number of large data centers.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 10:54 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026
Insight
Vahdat: AI scaling bottlenecks constantly rotate between labor, power, and chips
“When delivering the end-to-end, we unfortunately don't have the luxury of focusing on a single limiter. I would say very sincerely and honestly at 10 a.m. It's labor, at noon it's power, and at two p.m. It's chips every single day.”
Amin Vahdat Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 26:10 Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Jun 25, 2026 negative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
States use tech hyperscalers' ratepayer pledge to fight transmission tariffs
“In their complaints to FERC, for example, a bunch of states have cited that pledge, and I think that creates it's an opening for any time anyone wants to argue against however a tariff is getting structured, or a new transmission line, or whatever it might be …”
Shayle Kann Jun 25, 2026 ▶ 24:15 How data centers are complicating transmission expansion
Jul 9, 2026
Assertion Partly supported
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Google and Amazon drove bulk of 150 GW utility load pipeline
“The bulk of these contracted loads, I think at the end of 25, we had like a 150 gigawatts the PPL, you know, in, in, in Pennsylvania. That's mostly Google and Amazon. They're the ones sort of scouting all of the utility markets and you know, putting deposits a…”
Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 31:26 Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Google deployed $50B in balance sheet backstops for Anthropic
“If you look at how much capital they have sort of indirectly deployed, it's already fifty billion dollars of sort of applications that they have on their balance sheets that are solely in sort of the goal of supporting Anthropix data center build out.”
Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 21:21 Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 bullish
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2027
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Anthropic aims to add over 8 GW of power by 2027
“Anthropic, you know, one and a half gigs of capacity end of 20, 25. By 27, they won over 10 gigs, right? So they're going to build basically more than eight gigawatts in two years. That's the size of Google today.”
Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 14:36 Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 negative
Opinion
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Microsoft has dropped to fourth in hyperscaler energy sophistication
“I don't think I wouldn't call Microsoft now the second. I probably would rank them fourth now. I think you've seen Amazon step up pretty dramatically, and you've seen them at the frontier of a bunch of, you know, unique type of deals.”
Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 8:44 Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kann: Google's energy team is multiples larger than other hyperscalers
“I think Google's energy team is probably a multiple of the size of the next hyperscaler. Just the number, the sheer number of people they have dedicated to it.”
Shayle Kann Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 8:02 Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 positive
Opinion
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Google is the most sophisticated hyperscaler in energy strategy
“Generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that Google is the most sophisticated company. And on the energy side, they have sort of the biggest, you know, trading desks. They've choked some pretty big deals with utilities, as you probably know, for low flexi…”
Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 4:45 Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Nvidia risks losing silicon share unless it backstops neocloud power
“It's actually becoming a pretty existential risk for NVIDIA because if they don't support the NeoClouds, they're at risk of basically seeing Google Amazon and others take tremendous market share on the silicon side, right? So you would see Tranium take, take m…”
Jeremy Eliahu-Ontiveros Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 25:18 Inside the AI power wars
Sep 3, 2026 positive
Opinion
Kann: Google has the best community playbook among data center developers
“Google maybe is the best at this, have a playbook where you address all of those things as close to upfront as you can, and you offer a lot in exchange to the community.”
Shayle Kann Sep 3, 2026 ▶ 12:02 What comes after the data center backlash?
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