Next AI pivot will be to lower costs, ex-Facebook privacy chief says
The next phase of the AI boom will focus on being more efficient, former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly said Monday.
As major AI players race to mass produce the infrastructure needed to support AI workloads, Kelly told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the industry will need to streamline these power-intensive builds.
“We’re running our brains on 20 watts. We don’t need gigawatt powerhouses to reason,” Kelly said. “I think finding efficiency will be one of the most important things the big AI players are looking for.”
Kelly, who also serves as general counsel at Facebook, added that companies that can break new ground in reducing data center costs will emerge as AI winners.
The data center market has piled up more than $61 billion in infrastructure deals in 2025, according to S&P Global, as hyperscalers get caught up in a global construction frenzy.
OpenAI alone has made more than $1.4 trillion in AI commitments over the next few years, including massive partnerships with the GPU leader. Nvidia and infrastructure giants Seer And core weaving.
But the data center craze has also brought growing concerns about where the power to support these structures comes from, given the already strained power grid.
Nvidia and OpenAI announced A project launched in September involving at least 10 gigawatts of data centers, roughly equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 8 million U.S. households.
Ten gigawatts is the same amount of power as New York City’s peak summer demand in 2024. New York Independent System Operator.
The company further raised cost concerns after DeepSeek launched its free, open-source big-language model in December 2024 for under $6 million, priced significantly lower than its U.S. rivals.
Kelly said he expects “a number of Chinese players to come forward,” especially following President Donald Trump’s decision to approve the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to the country.
Kelly added that open-source models, especially outside of China, will give people access to “basic levels of computing” and generative and agency AI.
