Emerald AI's Sivaram says compute demand, energy limits, and data-center backlash have all intensified

Varun Sivaram, founder and chief executive of Emerald AI, says three inflection points in artificial intelligence and energy have arrived together: demand for compute has intensified, energy has become the bottleneck, and political backlash against data centers has accelerated. Speaking at Axios House with energy correspondent Amy Harder, he described power — not chips alone — as the constraint now deciding how fast AI infrastructure can be built in the United States.