President Donald Trump has laid down a new rule for the artificial intelligence building boom: big data centers must generate their own electricity, sell or give any excess power back to the local community or the grid, and pay the towns that host them a "dividend." In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said the mandate is how data centers stop being a burden on the communities around them and start being an asset.
"New and large, in some cases gigantic, Data Centers are mandated by me to make their own electricity, and give or sell any excess back to the local community, or grid," Trump wrote, according to Reuters. "This could prevent the possibility of electricity price increases and, in many cases, potentially lead to a substantial decrease in the prices of electricity."
The argument, as Trump tells it, comes from watching the politics of these projects up close. "I have watched the process closely, and data centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck," he wrote. His advice to the companies racing to build them is blunt: "If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a 'dividend.'"
"If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a 'dividend.'" — President Donald Trump
The stakes are visible from the air. Across the country, enormous data center campuses are rising next to suburbs and small towns, and the fights over them — over electricity demand, water use and who pays for grid upgrades — have become one of the few issues uniting voters across ideological lines. Trump is trying to change that math: a community that gets cheaper power and a dividend check has a reason to say yes, and a company that builds its own generation cannot be accused of driving up everyone else's bill.
The mandate did not come out of nowhere. In February, Trump said major technology companies have an obligation to provide their own power for their data centers, arguing that new power plants built alongside the facilities would protect consumers from rising electricity bills while the companies still benefit. On March 4, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI and xAI signed the White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, committing to build, bring or buy new generation for their data centers and to cover the cost of grid upgrades rather than passing those costs to households. Major technology companies, including Anthropic, have also committed a share of their value to public-good efforts — Anthropic has pledged 5 percent of its shares to a public-good fund — and Elon Musk has pledged a share of SpaceX stock to "every kid in America."
What is new is the community payment, and it lands in the middle of an AI race the president has repeatedly framed as a contest with China that America cannot afford to lose. If the biggest technology companies embrace the arrangement, the model could spread quickly: build your own power, share the excess, and cut the host community in. Whether they embrace it is now the question.
"MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!" Trump wrote. "GREAT FOR THE U.S.A."