President Donald Trump offered Silicon Valley an extraordinary deal on Wednesday: Build your own nuclear power plants to fuel AI, and his administration will approve them in just three weeks.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump addressed a room of tech executives struggling with an aging U.S. electrical grid.
“I came up with the idea,” Trump said. “You people are brilliant. You have a lot of money. You can build your own electric generating plants.”
Trump talked for about 10 minutes about energy in his speech, making it clear Trump views a straining electric grid as a central economic risk of 2026. As artificial intelligence pushes electricity demand to record highs, the administration is framing power shortages as an existential threat to growth and national security. Slashing approval timelines, Trump argued, is a necessary response to an energy system he said he believes is fundamentally unprepared for the AI era.
“We needed more than double the energy currently in the country just to take care of the AI plants,” Trump said.
The proposal marks a radical departure from the traditional Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) process, which historically requires four to five years for environmental and design approvals as well as rigorous site selection. Trump claimed that while tech leaders initially “didn’t believe him,” he assured them the government would deliver approvals for oil and gas plants in just two weeks, with nuclear projects following in three.
Trump said he wasn’t “a big fan” of nuclear power before, but now sees it as a newly viable solution due to safety improvements.
“The progress they’ve made with nuclear is unbelievable,” he said. “We’re very much into the world of nuclear energy, and we can have it now at good prices and very, very safe.”
While the potential upcoming wave of small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) could receive regulatory approvals in less than two years, there is little basis for going through an approval process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in closer to three weeks, and such an expedited process would trigger widespread concerns about safety and environmental risks.
Trump also touted a new energy alliance with Venezuela, noting the U.S. secured 50 million barrels of oil last week following the “end of an attack” on the nation that led to the deposition of President Nicolás Maduro. He said the new cooperation between the two nations would make Venezuela “fantastically well” while driving U.S. gasoline prices toward $2.00 a gallon.
Gasoline prices are the main inflationary measure by which costs have fallen during the first year of the new Trump administration. But they’re nowhere close to $2.00 per gallon. The national average for a gallon of regular unleaded is $2.76 per gallon this week, down 32 cents from a year ago, primarily because of rising OPEC oil production.
But Trump drew a sharp contrast with Europe’s energy landscape. Trump mocked the “Green New Scam,” citing a 64% spike in German electricity prices and the “catastrophic” decline of energy production in the United Kingdom. He targeted the North Sea and the proliferation of wind farms, which he labeled “losers” that “kill the birds.”
“Stupid people buy” wind farms, Trump laughed.
