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AI NewsAI companies are building huge natural gas plants to power data centers. What could go wrong?

AI companies are building huge natural gas plants to power data centers. What could go wrong?

7:08 AM IST ¡ April 4, 2026

AI companies are building huge natural gas plants to power data centers. What could go wrong?

Who doesn’t love a good round of FOMO? From dot-com to Web 2.0, virtual reality to blockchain, the tech industry has had its share of being too afraid to miss out on a trend. The AI bubble is the big daddy of them all. Its first offspring — the rush tolock down power for data centers— is now begetting a mad dash to secure natural gas supplies and equipment. If FOMOs could have babies, then the AI bubble is already having grandkids. Microsoft said on Tuesday that it’s working with Chevron and Engine No. 1 tobuild a natural gas power plantin West Texas that could grow to produce 5 gigawatts of electricity. This week Googleconfirmedthat it’s working with Crusoe to build a 933 MW natural gas power plant in North Texas. And last week, Meta announced that it was adding another seven natural gas power plants to its Hyperion data center in Louisiana, bringing the site to 7.46 GW of capacity —enough to power the entire state of South Dakota. Are we missing anyone? The recent investments are concentrated in the southern U.S., home to some of the largest natural gas deposits in the world. Recently, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there’s enough in one region to supply energy to the entire United States for10 monthsby itself. Every data center operator seems to want a part of it. The scramble for natural gas has led to a shortage of turbines for the power plants, with prices likely to rise 195% by the end of this year relative to 2019 prices,accordingto Wood Mackenzie. The equipment contributes 20% to 30% of the cost of a power plant. Companies won’t be able to place new orders until 2028, and it’s taking six years to get turbines delivered, the consultancy notes. That means tech companies are betting that the AI fever won’t break, that AI will continue to needexponential amounts of power, and that natural gas generation will be necessary for success in the AI era. They may come to regret that third assumption. Though natural gas supplies in the U.S. are plentiful, and because shipping the fuel isn’t cheap, the country remains somewhat insulated from the turmoil in the Middle East. But supplies aren’t unlimited, and recently, growth in production in the big three regions — responsible for three-quarters of all U.S. shale gas production — hasslowed considerably. It’s not clear how insulated tech companies are from price swings since none of them have disclosed specific terms of their agreements. A lot will depend on how firm the price is in those contracts. Even if the contracted prices are as firm as can be, the companies could still face repercussions. Because natural gas generates about 40% of the electricity in the U.S.,accordingto the Energy Information Administration, electricity prices are closely tied to natural gas prices. Tech companies might be able to shield themselves from scrutiny for a bit by moving their gas power plants behind the meter — by skipping the grid and connecting them directly to their data centers. But natural gas isn’t an unlimited resource, and if their ambitions grow too big, even the behind-the-meter operations could drive up power prices for everyone. We’ve all seen how that’s played out. It won’t just be regular households getting upset either. Other industries, including those that remain much more dependent on natural gas and can’t yet turn to renewables, might balk at data centers grabbing so much of the resource. Powering a data center with wind, solar, and batteries is easy. Running a petrochemical plant? Not so much. Then there’s the weather. One cold winter could change the calculus by driving up demand among households. Wellheads might freeze off, crimping supplies dramatically,as happened in Texasin 2021. When gas runs short, suppliers will face a choice: keep the AI data centers running or let people heat their homes? By snapping up natural gas supplies and moving behind-the-meter, tech companies can claim that they’re “bringing their own power” and not straining the electrical grid. But in reality, they’re just shifting their use from one grid to another, the natural gas grid. The AI rush has illustrated just how physically constrained the digital world remains. Does it make sense for them to bet big on a finite resource? Tech companies might regret falling for the FOMO.

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Cracks are emerging in the AI spending boom

Cracks are emerging in the AI spending boom

Investors are getting nervous about AI infrastructure spending just as the Big Tech companies double down. Over the past two weeks, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have outlined plans to spend more than $740 billion on capital expenditures this year, which Wall Street is reading as AI infrastructure spending, including data centers and chips. Earlier in the AI boom, investors largely rewarded such big outlays, viewing them as a sign of confidence in the technology’s growth potential. But as we enter the fourth quarter, that enthusiasm seems to be giving way to concerns about negative free cash flow (spending more cash than a company brings in), mounting debt, and whether these enormous investments will ever generate enough returns. The anxiety spilled across the market on Friday. The Nasdaq fell 2.9%, and chip stocks took a drubbing, too: Nvidia dropped 4%, Broadcom more than 5%, and Qualcomm 11%. Alphabet, which plummeted 12% on Thursday, its worst day on record, wiping out $500 billion in market value, fell again. A big part of the concern is that companies that used to have overflowing free cash flow from their core businesses are getting hit as AI threatens the economics of those businesses.Alphabet provided the clearest exampleof that this week. Google’s parent company reported negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion in the third quarter, its second consecutive quarter in the red, even as quarterly capex grew to $51.4 billion. Alphabet expects to spend up to $205 billion this year, and expects that spending to keep rising in 2027. Meanwhile, the wild success of AI Mode — Google’s AI-powered chatbot feature built directly into Search — is eating into the company’s money-maker. Google’s Search advertising business, which makes up roughly half of its revenue, saw growth slow to 12%, its weakest pace in five quarters. That leaves Google walking a tightrope. It’s spending billions on the AI technology that could undermine the search business that pays it. Amazon is in a similar boatafter reporting negative free cash flow of $42.4 billion over the past 12 months, compared with $14.8 billion in positive free cash flow the year before. The company says it expects to spend $220 billion in capex this year. Even though revenue at its cloud business, AWS, grew 39%, Amazon’s stock tumbled 7% after it reported earnings Thursday. Metais also burning cash, reporting negative free cash flow of $2.1 billion in the third quarter as capex outpaced its operating cash. It’s guiding to as much as $145 billion in capex this year. The company noted that Muse, its new free personal AI agent, is a bit of a money pit (it’s “very compute-intensive to run,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said). But ad revenue grew 26%. Still, no amount of good news saved Meta from taking a 10% hit on its stock last week. Microsoftwas the only exception when it came to free cash flow — it recorded $18.6 billion in positive free cash flow in its latest quarter, with spending on capex at $45.2 billion, less than the $50 billion it projected. Microsoft said that wasn’t an intentional pullback from AI spending, blaming delays in capacity from third-party providers. As a result, shares of smaller companies that rent out AI computing powersank. It’s worth noting that the money to pay for all of this AI infrastructure isn’t just coming from the Big Tech companies’ profits. It’s also showing up in stock and bond sales. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle raised a combined$326 billionin debt in 2026, triple the amount raised last year. Demand for AI compute remains strong. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all saw gains in their cloud businesses. But investors are getting spooked by the costs of meeting that demand. These muddied waters could complicate Anthropic’s highly anticipated IPO. The AI companyfiled to go public earlierthis week, and its future growth depends on securing enormous amounts of compute.Financial Times reportedFriday that Blackstone has warned investors the company might not qualify for an investment-grade rating after its IPO, meaning it might end up being more reliant on the hyperscalers and third-parties to fund its infrastructure ambitions.

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Last-minute Halloween costumes for tech nerds

Last-minute Halloween costumes for tech nerds

It happens to the best of us — you’ve completely dropped the ball on figuring out a Halloween costume. Naturally, you’ve decided to solve this problem by turning to… TechCrunch? Yeah, sure, why not. I’ve got some ideas. Here are some last-minute techy Halloween costumes. Effort levels vary. AI leaders like Dario Amodei and Sam Altman have expressed their fears that AI is developingtoo quickly, but if AI models become capable of “recursive self-improvement,” they’ll be able to advance on their own without human intervention, rendering any efforts to “pace the frontier” futile. I’m not sure how to visually represent the idea of an AI building itself, but you could really lean into the “self-improvement” part and forget the “recursive” aspect — it’s a last-minute Halloween costume. You don’t need to try that hard. Dress as the version of yourself you imagine becoming every year when you make New Year’s resolutions. Carry around a self-help or productivity book like “Atomic Habits” or anything by Malcolm Gladwell, a yoga mat, and a huge bottle of water. Leave in the middle of the party to “go to therapy” when you actually just want to go home. Brag to people about how good your Oura Ring’s sleep score is. You are the embodiment of someone trying to better themselves. You are recursive self-improvement. Meta and OpenAI both recently launched AI assistants with creepily cute avatars. It’s almost Elizabeth Holmes-esque — they look innocent, so you underestimate their potential to cause disaster. (While we’re talking about her, you’re only allowed to do the black turtleneck Holmes costume if you’re a natural blonde, or if you have a blonde wig.) What you’re going to do is make yourself look big and fluffy. Maybe you have a poofy puffer jacket, or maybe you can find some colorful feather boas to wrap yourself in. Add a distinctive hat, glasses, or other accessory to make yourself look more like a ChatGPT dot. If you have a colorful shirt and matching bottoms, that also works. Throughout the night, ask people if you can obtain read/write access to their Gmail. Whether you call them “pervert glasses” or not, we should all be able to agree that it would be really spooky if someone just started recording you without your consent — perfectly in keeping with the Halloween spirit. Just grab a pair of glasses — or buy a cheap pair somewhere convenient — and attach a big red or white circle to one lens, mimicking the red recording light. If you want to make the costume extra creepy (or, if you can’t make a big circle sticker), you can just wear normal glasses and say that you’re “guy recording with the light covered up.” Please, just don’tactuallyrecord people without their consent while you wear this costume. While we’re at it,Mark Zuckerberg’s fashionhas been pretty recognizable lately. He’s been wearing a lot of slightly oversized, boxy black T-shirts. It may be hard to replicate the black-text-on-black-shirt style he gravitates toward, but you could attach a piece of paper to yourself that says “Building is my love language.” If you feel confident in your Latin pronunciation, you could go for something actually scary, like the time he wore a shirt that said “Aut Zuck aut nihil,” which means “Either Zuck or nothing.” It’s a little ominous. For some people, there’s nothing scarier than running out of Claude tokens. Grab a piece of cardboard, print out screenshots of notifications telling you that you’ve reached your usage limit, and go spook some vibe-coders. I’ve illustrated this idea using an edited stock photo. You don’t have to dress like you work at Hot Topic — that’s just the model in the image. The scary PHP-ocalypse isfresh in our memory— it was only last week that AI unearthed critical PHP flaws that could’ve been catastrophic for the internet. The fear that web developers felt is still palpable, making it a good Halloween costume: You are a PHP vulnerability. Here’s what you’re going to do. Buy a T-shirt and a sharpie, and write PHP on it. Keep it simple. What about the vulnerability part? You’re going to have to commit to the bit. All night, you’re going to talk to your friends about your feelings. Actually bare your emotions. Talk about how your recent loss of a loved one made you remember how fragile life can be. If making yourself vulnerable kills the vibe, just pretend it was part of the Halloween costume and that you’re really cool and fun and never feel sad ever. The costume explains itself. Couples costume alert! Maybe you have more than one Halloween party to go to this weekend, but you want your various costumes to stick to a specific theme. Once you’ve got your sleepy time getup sorted, it’s time to prep your second costume portraying thecontroversial biohacker: GLP-Bryan. Johnsonwrote on Xearlier this year: “I frequently lay on top of Kate with all of my bodyweight. The deep pressure calms her nervous system, quiets racing thoughts, and releases oxytocin which lowers cortisol. We call it GLP-Bryan.” Naturally, people were confused, so he shared an image to demonstrate. Yes, this will be hard to reproduce as a Halloween costume, but if you’ve run out of time to buy anything, this one will do. Just wear a T-shirt and jeans, which you probably already own. It will be weird to lie on top of your partner in the middle of a party. Really weird. But that’s what you get for waiting until now to figure out a costume. lmk if you want a video demohttps://t.co/9g95g9y7D3pic.twitter.com/FiYjSs86nm

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Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says

Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says

Anthropic is expected to receive a high “junk” rating from credit rating agencies following its initial public offering, according toa reportfrom the Financial Times. The FT says the investment giant Blackstone, the anchor investor in a recent$63 billion dealto finance Anthropic’s chips, told investors in the deal that it expects the AI lab to receive a “high” junk rating after its IPO. Previously, the FT notes, Blackstone had said the opposite: that the Claude maker would receive an investment-grade rating (indicating low risk for lenders) before 2027 rolls around. Now Blackstone expects double B range rating, the top tier of speculative “junk” grade, according to the reporting. TechCrunch reached out to Anthropic and Blackstone but both declined to comment. Blackstone’s forecast is just a prediction, but naturally, a high junk rating would make it more difficult and costlier for Anthropic to raise the money to keep funding its massive spending that has undergirded its business. The lab has been on a spending spree, racking up large compute power deals throughout the past 12 months, which hasworried investors. Anthropic officiallyfiled to go publicearlier this week, kicking off a wave of speculation about how the massive IPO wouldimpact the broader AI industry.

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Intel’s stock crashes, knocking $12B from government’s stake

Intel’s stock crashes, knocking $12B from government’s stake

Intel’s stock suffered one of its worst days ever on Friday, crashing around 28% after the chip giant reported a weaker-than-expected outlook for the fourth quarter. This rout reduced the value of Intel’s holdings by the government by $12 billion,CNBC reports. The Trump administration had the government buy 10% stake over a year ago. Nvidia, which also took a big stake in Intel in 2025, saw its stock drop a bit on Friday as well. Much of the tech industry — especially chipmakers — were caught in the sell-off. Intel’s stock is still a profitable investment for the government so far (and for Nvidia), as it’s up more than 70% for the year, even if it’s dropped significantly from the sky-high prices it commanded over the summer. The scare-off was caused when Intel warned to expect revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion in the fourth quarter when analysts were looking for around $17 billion. It also warned that its gross profit margin would decline to 37% from 43%, and it was investing so heavily, it expected no positive cash flow. The main problem for Intel is that PC sales are being hurt by the AI industry gobbling memory and other components, and causingPC prices to rise. “Our customers began signaling a PC slowdown based on the memory prices and availability. Year-to-date system endpoint prices have increased significantly, placing additional pressure on already limited IT budgets,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned on the call. The bright side is that revenue from Intel’s data center business grew 78% over the year-ago quarter. But it is hamstrung on that front until it can bring more capacity to its fabs and book more external customers for them, competing with powerhouseTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. One of Intel’s new fabs in Arizona is operational but the next one isn’t expected to be online until 2028.

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AI companies are building huge natural gas plants to power data centers. What could go wrong?