The BestBroker team analysed the annual electricity consumption of the ten largest tech firms by market cap that publicly disclose such information. Based on the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration data, It compared their power usage to that of entire countries. We also looked at what else could be powered with the energy these firms use in a year, including AI operations.
A total of 129 countries and territories each consume less power per year than Google alone, which used 25,307 gigawatt-hours in its last fiscal year.
Libya, which uses around 25,000 gigawatt-hours annually with a population of over 7 million people.
Google consumed 56 times more electricity last year to keep its global operations running than ChatGPT uses annually to handle user prompts. This estimate is based on ChatGPT’s 200 million weekly active users each making about 15 queries per week, with each query consuming roughly 2.9 watt-hours of electricity.
In its last fiscal year, Samsung consumed 29,956 GWh of electricity across its global business sites. That’s nearly as much as the entire energy consumption of Ireland (5.2 million people) or Serbia (6.7 million people), each using around 31,000 GWh per year. Samsung also consumes more power than Ecuador (18.3 million people, 28,000 GWh) or Slovakia (5.6 million people, 26,000 GWh).
TSMC's power consumption surpasses Azerbaijan's yearly total of 24,000 gigawatt-hours, a nation of 10.7 million people. The energy needed by TSMC, the largest semiconductor maker in the world, reached 24,775 gigawatt-hours in 2023.
Microsoft’s power usage of 23,568 gigawatt-hours last year outpaced the entire electricity consumption of countries like Jordan (20,000 GWh, 11.2 million people), Iceland (19,000 GWh, 364 hundred people), Puerto Rico (18,000 GWh, 3 million people), or Croatia (17,000 GWh, 4.2 million people).
Facebook's parent company Meta wasn’t far behind, consuming 15,325 gigawatt-hours in 2023, more than Angola, Burma, Cuba, Sudan, or Zambia, each using roughly 15,000 gigawatt-hours annually.
China’s Tencent, meanwhile, used 5,115 gigawatt-hours, about as much as Brunei (5,200 GWh, 491.9 hundred people). Tencent also exceeded Cyprus's total electricity demands (5,000 GWh/year, 1.3 million people).
Apple consumed 3,487 gigawatt-hours in its last fiscal year, placing its energy needs on par with those of nations like Jamaica (3,400 GWh/year, 2.8 million people). The iPhone maker also required more electricity than countries like Montenegro (3,000 GWh/year, 599.8 hundred people) or Malta (2,800 GWh/year, 469.7 hundred people).
NVIDIA, with 613 gigawatt-hours of annual consumption, rivals countries such as Bermuda and Greenland.
ASML and Broadcom reported electricity usage of 480 and 417 gigawatt-hours respectively. This exceeds the annual energy demands of small island nations like Cabo Verde or Saint Lucia, each using 300 to 400 gigawatt-hours. Interestingly, ChatGPT consumes more power annually to generate responses than semiconductor giant Broadcom used for its global facilities in 2023.
In addition, Google consumed enough energy in its last fiscal year to charge a mind-blowing 349.6 million electric vehicles or provide electricity to 2.4 million U.S. households for an entire year. If Google were to use all of this electricity to mine Bitcoins, it could yield around 29,714 coins. On the AI front, the same amount of electricity could process 8.7 trillion ChatGPT prompts.
