Amazon Web Services will test sustainable hardware in 2025.
Amazon is put to pilot an AI-designed material aimed at reducing carbon emissions in its data centers. Created by Orbital Materials, the carbon filtering substance acts like a sponge at the atomic level, selectively capturing CO2. This material represents a step toward Amazon’s goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Orbital Materials says the new material could add just 10% to hourly GPU training costs for AI, which is significantly cheaper than traditional carbon offsets. Data centers increasingly require more energy and water for cooling, posing sustainability issues. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud computing provider, plans to test this innovation in 2025 in a single facility.
The partnership with Orbital spans three years and aims to explore other AI-designed materials for water and cooling needs. Orbital uses AI to simulate and develop these substances, with the material synthesized in its laboratory established last year. The collaboration also includes making Orbital’s open source AI tools available to AWS customers.
Orbital, co-founded by Jonathan Godwin, operates in Princeton and London and is backed by Radical Ventures and Nvidia’s venture capital arm. Godwin, formerly at DeepMind, highlighted the importance of sustainable innovations to address growing environmental concerns related to AI-driven energy demands.
