CEOs from the seven largest tech companies in the US have signed a “ratepayer protection pledge” at the White House.

The pledge, which is non-binding, is expected to see the companies - Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon - commit to building or buying the immense electricity infrastructure required to power their data centers, in addition to the transmission and distribution infrastructure needed to connect the power to the grid.

During the signing ceremony, President Donald Trump said that the pledge would bring utility bills down “very substantially.”

“(It’s) going to have a tremendous impact on electricity costs; we’re bringing down all of the costs,” he added.

The move came amid fears that data center energy demand could impact consumers' bills. During the President's State of the Union address, he contended that such measures were required to protect consumers.

Since the start of the year, the President has been increasingly vocal about the risks of bill increases related to the massive data center build-out happening across the country. Last month, President Trump said that the administration had been in active discussions with data center companies to ensure that households would not pay more for electricity due to the AI buildout, with Microsoft the first to agree to this arrangement.

In response, Microsoft announced a new initiative, named Community-First AI Infrastructure. As part of it, Microsoft will "pay our way to ensure our data centers don’t increase your electricity prices [and] minimize our water use and replenish more of your water than we use," alongside local jobs, taxes, and investments in AI training.

Following this, OpenAI announced a similar initiative in an effort to help prevent rising electricity costs in the regions where it is building its Stargate data center projects.

The announcement by OpenAI closely followed a call from the Trump administration and a bipartisan coalition of governors for Mid-Atlantic-based Regional Transmission Operator (RTO) PJM Interconnection to force data center developers to pay for any new power generation they require, "whether they show up and use the power or not."

The federal push is mirrored at the state level, where legislation aimed at insulating regular ratepayers from footing the bill for new generation and transmission infrastructure needed to power data centers has been advanced and passed. Kentucky, California, Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin have all seen legislation either proposed or passed to this effect over the past 12 months.