Salim Ismail

Founder @OpenExO
Partner @ Member @XPrize
Founding Exec Dir @SingularityU.

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@theDAHTcom @moonshots_pod @JeffBooth Yes need to get Jeff on!

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

Boom..

[Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross @alexwg]

Moonshots episode #287 is out. https://t.co/ZtbNGzIOv5

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@ChrisDMarshall @Rogerstigers LMAO. Wonderful!!

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@endgame2026 @moonshots_pod @PeterDiamandis @alexwg Omg this is so great. Welcome to the singularity, I guess..

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@innermaps @moonshots_pod Boom!

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@DiarioBitcoin @spaceandtech_ @moonshots_pod Omg. Fantastic..

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@FiveAllian88212 @PeterDiamandis @EMostaque @DaveBlundin @alexwg Congregation of Hope. Love it

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

Some really important points here re data centers

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday.

What I should have said:

There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this.

On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way.

On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project.

On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns.

On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians.

On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers.

On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries.

On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land.

Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged.

When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America.

I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw.

Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

This is just fabulous..

[Josh Barzon @JoshuaBarzon]

6,000 years of world history on a single timeline. Zoom in. You could spend 30 minutes exploring this.

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

This was such a great conversation - if you're following my world at all, please watch..

[unSILOed Podcast with Greg LaBlanc @UnsiloedPodcast]

Discover how AI agents could replace much of middle management, and why @salimismail believes this shift will redefine leadership and accelerate innovation. Check the full episode at https://t.co/MnkSrMlqQT | @DiversionBooks @OpenExO

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@TimothyMcGuire That's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. You never know if you're making a difference..

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

This is exactly right..

[daniel debow @ddebow]

think less about trump

think more about selling, building, competing & growing our companies, products and services.

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@tomaspueyo Best of luck,, Thomas! I'll be there at the finals

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

Wonderfully put (as usual) by Jason..

[Jason Silva @JasonSilva]

The singularity is usually defined as a hypothetical future threshold beyond which technological change becomes too rapid and transformative for ordinary prediction. Awe is the emotion that arrives whenever reality crosses such a threshold locally: whenever an experience outruns the model observing it.

The two share an architecture:

vastness → model failure → accommodation → expanded possibility

This is what I mean by the awe singularity: the moment possibility becomes too large for the identity that had organized itself around limitation.

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@CarrieVanOrnum Thank you! Maybe we should have a debbie downer guest just for the conversation.. !

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

This was an amazing episode... must watch!!

[StockAnalystPro @StockAnalystPro]

MUST WATCH: an excellent deep-dive discussion with @ramez on the intersection of AI, energy, grid infrastructure, and the future of data centers in @launchmoonshots podcast. Hosted by @PeterDiamandis @DaveBlundin @salimismail @alexwg 🙏.

Ramez has an incredible breadth of knowledge across the entire energy stack—from transmission and grid economics to solar, batteries, nuclear, fusion, geothermal, and emerging energy technologies.

A few topics covered in the video ⚡️🤖

AI & the Grid: Why the near-term constraint for AI data centers may be access to power through transmission, substations, transformers, and interconnection—not simply electricity generation.
Grid Interconnection Queues: Why large data centers can face multi-year connection timelines, with some projects potentially stretching into 2031–2032.
Batteries as “Electron Caching”: How batteries can charge when grid utilization is low and discharge during peak demand, allowing existing grid infrastructure to be used more efficiently.
Interruptible Loads: How AI data centers can temporarily reduce grid demand using batteries, workload scheduling, checkpointing, and other forms of compute flexibility.
Moving Compute to Energy: Why some AI workloads, particularly training, can increasingly be located where power, land, fiber, and cooling are abundant instead of bringing enormous amounts of new power into traditional data center hubs.
Behind-the-Meter (BTM) Power: The role of on-site generation in helping data centers bypass long utility interconnection timelines, along with the infrastructure and regulatory challenges involved.
Solar + Storage: How declining solar and battery costs could contribute to the growing power requirements of AI infrastructure.
Next-Generation Batteries: The potential role of sodium-ion and other storage technologies where cost, safety, cycle life, and material availability matter more than battery weight.
Nuclear & SMRs: The role of existing nuclear power and the potential for Small Modular Reactors to provide reliable 24/7 power as the technology develops.
Fusion: Why the emergence of 50+ venture-backed fusion companies, along with advances in magnets, materials, plasma control, and engineering, is changing the fusion landscape.
Advanced Geothermal & Ocean Energy: Emerging technologies that could potentially expand the sources and locations of reliable energy generation.
AI Compute Efficiency: What a better hardware, quantization, Mixture-of-Experts, inference optimization, and workload scheduling can increase the amount of AI compute delivered per MW.

A very informative discussion covering the full AI energy stack—from generation → grid → storage → data centers → compute efficiency → next-generation energy technologies. ⚡️👇
https://t.co/e0F5WFX12X

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@basadomente @compound248 @EMostaque @alexwg @PeterDiamandis @DaveBlundin @moonshotslive Having worked for one mega Corp, and sold a company to another, it's possible that I'm not entirely making this up

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@sgates @alexwg @EMostaque @DaveBlundin @PeterDiamandis I would say yes, but we don't even know how the current posts are defined or even where to place them

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

@LaMancha574 @PeterDiamandis @alexwg @DaveBlundin We recorded today..! It'll drop soon..

[Salim Ismail @salimismail]

Totally agree... !!

[james hong @jhong]

I predict vehicle to home (v2h) backup power for power outages is going to be a huge deal for EV sales over the next 10 years.