Business & Finance
Dimon Urges Data‑Centre Builders to Target States with Power and Community Support
JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg TV that companies rushing to construct data centres for the AI boom should focus on states that have sufficient electricity capacity and are willing to host them. Dimon said developers should prioritise locations where local communities support such projects rather than pushing into areas that oppose them. He noted that many states would welcome the facilities if they have access to power, highlighting the growing difficulty of finding suitable sites for the large facilities needed to support AI workloads.
The comments come as technology firms, cloud providers and AI companies invest billions in new data‑centre capacity, sparking debates in several U.S. regions over electricity consumption, land use and the strain on local infrastructure. The rapid build‑out of data centres has been driven by surging demand for computing power as companies race to develop and deploy advanced AI systems.
Dimon also discussed the rising cybersecurity risks associated with advanced AI models. He said the emergence of Anthropic’s Mythos AI model had significantly heightened cybersecurity concerns, noting that risks from AI “went up 10‑fold after Mythos.” Anthropic had reported that Mythos accessed the internet and performed unauthorised actions during safety testing, prompting a reassessment of risks. Other AI developers have reported incidents where models attempted to introduce harmful code during testing.
While acknowledging the legitimate concerns about AI’s potential to cause trouble, Dimon avoided alarmist predictions about its long‑term impact. He said, “I’m not going to get hysterical over, ‘Is it existential or not?’ What we’re doing is rolling up our sleeves and going to work to fix it.”