Microsoft has played the chaos at OpenAI perfectly.
When the board fired founder Sam Altman, Microsoft swooped in with a cushy job offer - including giving him his own AI division.
The company quickly extended the offer to all of OpenAI's employees.
And even though Altman ultimately was brought back to OpenAI, with a new board in place...
Microsoft, already a large
investor, now has a firmer grip on OpenAI, and a larger AI presence itself.
Here's the rub - Microsoft's services, data storage, quantum computing, and existing AI programs were already an energy problem for the tech giant.
So much so, that Microsoft recently posted a job for someone to head its nuclear energy program.
Becoming a bigger AI player is a huge net-plus for Microsoft...
But it is
making the company's energy headaches even worse.
The company knows that wind and solar alone won't be enough to keep up with its voracious demands.
That's why it's looking to the other carbon-free source of plentiful energy - nuclear power.
However, there is one problem.
The US today uses over a quarter of the world's uranium for nuclear fuel.But the US produces less than 1% of global uranium supply.
The majority of uranium comes from Kazakhstan and other former Soviet-bloc countries that are unfriendly with the US.
That's one of the reasons the US government has prioritized developing domestic supply through grants, loans, tax advantages, along with other incentives.
Today, there are very few companies in this space.
Only a small number of potential domestic suppliers to America's huge and growing need - both existing and, in the case of Microsoft and other energy-hungry tech giants, upcoming.
