The proliferation of AI data centers plugging into the national electrical grid has helped increase consumer electricity prices, driving up the average national electricity price by more than 6% in the last year.
That’s not a good look for the incumbents ahead of this fall’s elections, and President Donald Trump addressed the challenge in his State of the Union speech last night.
“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up.”
The hyperscalers in question don’t need to be told. They have already made public commitments in recent weeks to cover electricity costs by building their own power sources, paying higher rates, or both, part of a broader effort to solve PR problems around data center expansion and win over skeptical communities.
On January 11, Microsoft announced its policy “to ensure that the electricity cost of serving our datacenters is not passed on to residential customers.” January 26, OpenAI committed to “paying its own way on energy, so that our operations don’t increase your energy prices.” On February 11, Anthropic made the same pledge to “cover electricity price increases that consumers face from our data centers.” Yesterday, Google announced the largest battery project in the world yesterday to support a data center in Minnesota.
What these commitments means in practice, and who will determine which data centers are responsible for which price increases, remains unknown. The White House did not respond to questions about the policy from TechCrunch.
“A handshake agreement with Big Tech over data center costs isn’t good enough,” Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly said on social media. “Americans need a guarantee that energy prices won’t soar and communities have a say.”
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White House spokesperson Taylor Rodgesr said that next week, companies will send representatives to formally sign the pledge at the White House. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI are reportedly among those set to attend. However none of the companies have confirmed their attendance.
Even if tech companies committ to taking on electricity costs, on-site power plants may not be a panacea—they can still have adverse impacts on the surrounding environment, and will stress supply chains for natural gas, turbines, photovoltaics and batteries, depending on how companies aim to power their compute.
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![New Google commercial imagines a Declaration of Independence written with help from AI | TechCrunch
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.
Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google’s “help me visualize” AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III’s document access request.
The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point, Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over beers?”), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google commercial in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one shies away from any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eye has the uncanny glow of AI-generated video.
While viewer comments on YouTube and Instagram appear to be mostly positive, you may not be surprised to learn that the response on Bluesky has been far more critical. Posters declared the commercial “cringey” and “stunningly tone deaf,” and the AI angle was the biggest target — even as many users, including historian Angus Johnston, noted that it’s “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”
“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it’s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,” Johnston said.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RjZY-rSsc[/embed]
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Google #commercial #imagines #Declaration #Independence #written #TechCrunchgemini,Google](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/google-declaration-of-independence.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1 "New Google commercial imagines a Declaration of Independence written with help from AI | TechCrunch
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.
Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google’s “help me visualize” AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III’s document access request.
The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point, Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over beers?”), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google commercial in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one shies away from any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eye has the uncanny glow of AI-generated video.
While viewer comments on YouTube and Instagram appear to be mostly positive, you may not be surprised to learn that the response on Bluesky has been far more critical. Posters declared the commercial “cringey” and “stunningly tone deaf,” and the AI angle was the biggest target — even as many users, including historian Angus Johnston, noted that it’s “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”
“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it’s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,” Johnston said.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RjZY-rSsc[/embed]
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Google #commercial #imagines #Declaration #Independence #written #TechCrunchgemini,Google")
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