Elon Musk vouches for NVIDIA's thirsty data centers 💧 0.2% never looked so hydrated

Elon Musk has publicly backed NVIDIA's contention that data center water consumption is far smaller than critics suggest, lending his voice to the chipmaker's defense of AI infrastructure as scrutiny over resource use intensifies. NVIDIA cited a March 2026 estimate from the Manhattan Institute showing that data centers account for roughly 0.2% of U.S. freshwater use, most of it indirectly through power generation. The figure has dropped in recent years as newer cooling systems enter service, according to the company, which detailed the claims in a post on X on June 22, 2026.

NVIDIA's argument centers on its 45-degree Celsius liquid cooling design, which lets AI factories in cool climates rely on dry coolers rather than evaporative cooling towers. The company said the shift can reduce facility cooling water from approximately 2.6 million gallons per megawatt annually to near zero. In 2025, NVIDIA also claimed its Blackwell systems were 300 times more water efficient than traditional air cooling. "The NVIDIA DSX reference design for AI factories has zero water consumption … we have eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage," said Ali Heydari, NVIDIA's director of data center cooling and infrastructure.

Musk, whose xAI operates large NVIDIA-powered clusters, has repeatedly cited NVIDIA's chips as central to his AI projects, and his endorsement reinforces the company's position that AI expansion does not meaningfully strain local water supplies. NVIDIA describes its system as a closed loop that recirculates coolant rather than drawing fresh water, and the same design can cut electricity used for cooling, which the company noted can reach 40% of a data center's total power draw.

Independent figures paint a more layered picture. A Berkeley Lab report found that U.S. data centers used about 17.4 billion gallons of water directly in 2023, plus another 211 billion gallons indirectly through electricity generation, with direct use projected to reach 38 to 73 billion gallons by 2028. Dry coolers also depend on climate, performing best in cool regions and less effectively in hot, arid areas. The tension is visible at xAI's Memphis Colossus site, which has drawn roughly 1.3 million gallons of drinking water per day from the local aquifer and operated dozens of gas turbines before permits were secured, prompting a data center pollution lawsuit and community appeals.