President Donald Trump has suggested that companies building data centers in the United States should offer local communities a dividend to make them more popular.
“If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend,’” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.
New data centers, which are required to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), have become politically controversial in some areas because of the amount of electricity and water they consume.
Local resistance blocked or delayed at least 75 data center projects, worth $130 billion, in the first quarter of 2026, according to Data Center Watch.
The Trump administration has supported AI, and the president said last month that U.S. government documents would start referring to it as “super intelligence.”
On Oct. 4, Trump announced the creation of the Super Intelligence Force to coordinate federal efforts to maintain the United States’ lead over China in AI technology.
“As the President of the United States, I have been watching Data Centers very closely, and have come to a very strong conclusion,” Trump wrote on Wednesday.
“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, and therefore there is [an] electric price increase. In fact, there could be a substantial decrease.”
