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Why do AI data centers need so much water?
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Modern data center in Middenmeer, Netherlands, with fenced cooling equipment and exhaust stacks beside a canal. Facebook data center in Eagle Mountain, Utah, with snow-capped Flat Top mountains rising behind the fenced gray facility.
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Modern data center in Middenmeer, Netherlands, with fenced cooling equipment and exhaust stacks beside a canal.
A data center in the Netherlands close to a freshwater source Water is required for cooling the servers and other hardware in these facilities.

Why do AI data centers need so much water?

Written by
Manjishtha Bhattacharyya
Manjishtha Bhattacharyya is an editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. She holds a PhD in zoology from Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, and has more than seven years of experience in science communication...
Manjishtha Bhattacharyya
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
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In September 2026 Sam Altman, cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, pushed back against claims about the vast quantities of water consumed by artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. According to Altman, growing a single California almond requires roughly as much water as ChatGPT uses to process about 38,000 prompts. In a blog post published the previous year, he had put the water consumption of a single ChatGPT query at approximately 0.3 milliliter (0.01 fluid ounce), or...

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