AI needs more power than the grid can deliver – supersonic tech can fix that

Summary

By: Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO, Boom Supersonic It started, as many things do these days, by scrolling on X. I was reading post after post about the power crisis hitting AI data centers—GPU racks sitting idle, waiting not on chips, but on electricity. I texted with Sam Altman—who confirmed power was indeed a major constraint. I pinged our engineering team—and found that they already had the outline of a plan to build a power turbine based on our Symphony supersonic engine. After a few conversations, it became clear: AI didn’t just need more turbines—it needed a new and fundamentally better turbine. Symphony was the perfect new engine to accelerate AI in America. About three months later, we had a signed deal for 1.21 gigawatts and had started manufacturing the first turbine. VIDEO Today, we’re announcing Superpower, our new 42‑megawatt natural gas turbine, along with a $300M funding round and Crusoe as our launch customer. And most importantly: this marks a turning point. Boom is now on a self-funded path to both Superpower and the Overture supersonic airliner. I want to share the real story of how this happened—and why supersonic technology is exactly what America’s energy crisis demands. America Doesn’t Have 10–15 Years to Solve Its Power Problem the Old Way If you’ve been paying attention, you know the U.S. is in a genuine energy crunch. GPU racks are idling because they can’t get power. Data centers are fighting over substations and interconnection queues. Meanwhile China is adding power capacity at a wartime pace—coal, gas, nuclear, everything—while America struggles to get a single transmission line permitted. AI won’t wait for us to fix the grid. And the United States simply doesn’t have 10–15 years to build out power infrastructure the old way. Hyperscalers have already moved to their own Plan B: behind‑the‑meter power plants. You’ve seen XAI’s Colossus I and II in Memphis. OpenAI’s Stargate I in Abilene. These projects are powered by arrays of aeroderivati...