Can These New Chips Solve AI’s Energy Problem?

WSJ Tech News Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

News, Tech News

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chip startups are battling to sell cloud-computing providers the custom-built inference chips of the future. But the question is, can they actually make a dent in AI’s projected energy demand? WSJ columnist and co-host of the Bold Names podcast, Christopher Mims joins us to explain. Plus, Hollywood is losing ground to YouTube as the tech giant wins the battle for TV viewers. Belle Lin hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Further Reading How YouTube Won the Battle for TV Viewers The New Chips Designed to Solve AI’s Energy Problem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:32.5	Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, August 1st. I'm Bell Lynn for the Wall Street Journal.
0:39.6	People now watch YouTube on TV sets more than on their phones or any other device,
0:44.8	an average of more than one billion hours each day. WSJ reporter Ben Fritz tells us how YouTube
0:50.9	came to dominate our TV screens and what that means for the future of content on YouTube.
0:56.8	Then there's little debate that AI consumes massive amounts of power and those demands are increasing exponentially.
1:04.7	One potential way to address the problem, redesigning computer chips that power how AI actually runs.
1:12.3	But first, YouTube started as a website to watch videos on PCs.
1:17.2	But now it's a bona fide media juggernaut, and it's beating out Hollywood in the process.
1:23.0	WSJ reporter Ben Fritz joins Patrick Coffey to discuss how YouTube overtook traditional media to become the most watched video provider on televisions in the U.S. earlier this year.
1:34.6	Ben, YouTube became the most watched content distributor on TV this year.
1:40.1	Would it be right to say that the gap between that platform and other big names like Disney seems likely to keep growing?
1:47.1	Yeah, the trend is just a bigger and bigger gap between YouTube and second place, which is currently Disney.
1:54.4	And keep in mind, when we see Disney, we mean the ABC Network, the Disney Channel, ESPN, Disney Plus, Hulu, everything that Disney offers for video.
2:04.8	YouTube is beating them all combined, and the same is true for all other media companies as well as Netflix.
2:10.7	And 10 years ago, YouTube tried to enter the scripted drama arena with Cobra Kai.
2:16.2	But at the time, at least, that approach didn't work.
2:18.6	It was very telling to me that that show only became a hit when it moved to Netflix.
2:24.3	What's different about YouTube's new ambitions for original scripted material?
2:29.6	I think the big reason Cobra Chi didn't work on YouTube is it was behind a paywall.
2:33.0	It was you had to subscribe
	...

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