Amazon to Pilot AI-designed Material for Carbon Removal

Dec 2 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc, plans to pilot a new carbon-removal material for data centers, which are at risk of worsening emissions from artificial intelligence systems they power, a startup behind the deal said on Monday.

In a twist, AI itself, from the startup Orbital Materials, is what designed the carbon-filtering substance, its Chief Executive Jonathan Godwin said.

"It's like a sponge at the atomic level," Godwin told Reuters. "Each cavity in that sponge has a specific size opening that interacts well with CO2, that doesn’t interact with other things."

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Potential Cost-Savings and Environmental Impact

Potential cost-savings are partly the draw. The new material adds up to an estimated 10% of the hourly charge to rent a GPU chip for training powerful AI -- a fraction of carbon offsets' price, Godwin said.

At the same time, data centers are requiring more energy to sustain AI's development and more water to keep them cool. That poses a challenge to companies like Amazon, which has committed to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Role in the Partnership

Its unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is the world's largest cloud-computing provider by revenue. It is piloting the novel material in one data center to start in 2025 as part of its three-year partnership with Orbital, Godwin said. The agreement also provides for Orbital to use AWS technology and to make its open-source AI available to AWS customers.

Howard Gefen, general manager of AWS Energy & Utilities, in a statement said the partnership would encourage sustainable innovation. Godwin declined to state the financial terms.

Orbital Materials’ Innovations and Vision

Orbital, which has operations in Princeton, New Jersey, and London, set up a lab about a year ago to synthesize substances that had been simulated by its AI, Godwin said. The startup aims to work with AWS to test still-more AI-generated materials to address water use and chip cooling in data centers.

Godwin co-founded the 20-person company, backed by Radical Ventures and Nvidia's venture arm among others, after helping lead materials science work for Alphabet's DeepMind until 2022.

About Amazon.com Inc

Amazon.com Inc is a multinational technology company focused on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, and artificial intelligence. Committed to sustainability, Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 as part of The Climate Pledge.