Sam Altman says AI developers have fumbled at communicating the technology’s benefits

Sam Altman says the AI industry has done a terrible job of communicating the benefits of the technology and is now exposed to a backlash, after local opposition blocked or delayed 75 data centre projects worth about $130B in a single quarter. In Europe the binding constraint is grid capacity, with Denmark holding roughly 60GW of queued projects against a 7GW peak demand.

Sam Altman says the AI industry has done a terrible job of explaining what the technology is for. He told Bloomberg Television that the failure has left developers exposed to a growing backlash, Bloomberg reported.

“I think we have done a bad job ourselves, maybe better than some others, worse than some others“, the OpenAI chief executive said. People rightly get afraid when they feel AI leaders may not want them to have more power and autonomy, he added.

The backlash has a figure attached. At least 75 data centre projects worth about $130B were blocked or delayed by local opposition in the first three months of this year.

Data Center Watch compiled that count. The quarter came close to the total for all of 2025. Those are American projects.

Calling it a communications failure is itself a communications strategy. The industry has been running a charm offensive to get these sites built.

In Europe the obstacle is not sentiment. It is the grid, and the constraint is physical and measured.

Denmark’s operator Energinet paused grid connections in March. It was holding roughly 60GW of queued projects against a national peak demand of about 7GW.

That is nearly nine times what the system carries. Danish data centre capacity stood at 398MW at the start of the year, with a further 208MW under construction.

No amount of explaining creativity and entrepreneurship moves that ratio. The pause was set at three months while new prioritisation criteria were drafted.

The European argument also runs on filed numbers rather than on persuasion. That was a deliberate choice, and the disclosure rule predates the current wave of projects.

Since 2024, any data centre with at least 500kW of installed IT power demand has had to report its energy and sustainability performance into a European database. The Commission publishes what it collects.

More is due this year. A data centre energy efficiency package and the Cloud and AI Development Act would tie public support to energy, water and circularity performance. Neither is law yet.

Permission is also refused on the record here. Dublin turned down a Google data centre over energy concerns.