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The team from the Geological Agency of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) took samples of natural hydrogen gas found in One Pute Jaya Village, Morowali Regency, Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, 23 October 2023.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

A global gold rush is underway for a long-overlooked resource that advocates say could play a significant role in the shift away from fossil fuels.

Geologic hydrogen, sometimes referred to as white, gold or natural hydrogen, refers to hydrogen gas that is found in its natural form beneath Earth’s surface. It is thought to be produced by high-temperature reactions between water and iron-ich minerals.

Hydrogen has long been billed as one of many potential energy sources that could play a pivotal role in the energy transition, but most of it is produced using fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, a process that generates significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Green hydrogen, a process that involves splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity, is one exception from what’s known as the hydrogen color rainbow. However, its development has been held back by soaring costs and a challenging economic environment.

It’s within this context that momentum has been building around geologic hydrogen. Exploratory efforts are now underway in countries such as the U.S., Canada, Australia, France, Spain, Colombia, South Korea and others.

A photo taken on April 27, 2023 shows gauges that are part of the electrolysis plant of the geological hydrogen H2 storage facility ‘Underground Sun Storage’ in Gampern, Upper Austria.

Alex Halada | Afp | Getty Images

Research published earlier this month by Rystad Energy showed that 40 companies were actively searching for geologic hydrogen deposits by the end of last year — up from just 10 in 2020.

The consulting firm, which described the pursuit of geologic hydrogen as a “white gold rush,” said the hype stems from hopes that the untapped resource could be a “gamechanger” in the clean energy transition.

“I would say this is something relatively old and new in a way,” Minh Khoi Le, head of hydrogen research at Rystad Energy, told CNBC via videoconference. “The first project that found hydrogen was a while ago, but it never picked up from there, right? People never seriously tried to go for exploration.”

An accidental discovery

The initial discovery of geologic hydrogen occurred in 1987 in a small village roughly 60 kilometers (37.3 miles) from Mali’s capital of Bamako. A failed attempt to drill for water by Canada’s Hydroma hit upon an abundance of odorless gas that was inadvertently found to be highly flammable. The well was soon plugged and forgotten.

Almost two decades later, subsequent exploration at the site found geologic reservoirs containing nearly pure hydrogen gas. Today, the resource is being used to provide power to the Malian village of Bourakébougou.

Last year, researchers found what may be the world’s largest geologic hydrogen deposit to date in France’s eastern Lorraine region. The unexpected discovery further boosted interest in its clean energy potential.

A man is seen in a pirogue on the Niger River in Bamako, Mali on January 26, 2024.

Ousmane Makaveli | Afp | Getty Images

Geoffrey Ellis, a research geologist at the Energy Resources Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), told CNBC that there could be a vast amount of naturally occurring hydrogen buried in underground reservoirs around the world.

Based on current understanding, Ellis said there is likely to be about 5 trillion metric tons of geologic hydrogen in Earth’s interior, although most of this is likely to be too deep or too far offshore to be economically recovered.

Nonetheless, Ellis said that just a few percent of geologic hydrogen recovery might well be enough to supply all projected demand for 200 years.

“The potential is there but we’ve got to do the work,” Ellis said via videoconference, adding that more investment is necessary to accelerate early-stage research and development.

The U.S. Department of Energy last month announced $20 million to support 16 projects nationwide to advance the natural subsurface generation of hydrogen. It said the energy resource could potentially produce zero carbon emissions when burned or used in a fuel cell.

If some of these numbers that certain institutes, like the USGS, about the potential volume that you can extract … come true, it can actually play quite a significant role.

Minh Khoi Le

Head of hydrogen research at Rystad Energy

“Natural hydrogen has created a lot of excitement at the moment but in terms of potential I think it is still a little bit uncertain because none of these projects have actually started producing or extracting hydrogen — except for that one in Mali,” Rystad Energy’s Le told CNBC.

Le said there were still “a lot of question marks around the whole story about natural hydrogen,” but there appeared to be “some substance” behind the hype.

“If some of these numbers that certain institutes, like the USGS, about the potential volume that you can extract … come true, it can actually play quite a significant role,” he added.

‘Sometimes we want to run before we can walk’

This photograph shows Lhyfe floating hydrogen production unit (R) past the Floatgen floating wind turbine (L), at the SEM-REV experimentation site off Le Croisic, western France, on June 26, 2023.

Sebastien Salom-gomis | Afp | Getty Images

Separately, the Hydrogen Science Coalition, a group of academics, scientists and engineers seeking to bring an evidence-based view to hydrogen’s role in the energy transition, said in a recent blog post that geologic hydrogen discoveries currently supply the world with less daily energy than a single wind turbine.

What’s more, the coalition says there are environmental concerns about the extraction process, and transportation and distribution challenges mean geologic hydrogen is not likely to be found where it is needed most.

“Considering findings to date, what we know about geologic hydrogen systems, and the fact that favourable settings appear rare, the odds of finding geologic hydrogen that can be extracted at the scale of large natural gas developments looks relatively slim,” the coalition said on March 14.

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This 75 MPH electric car with bicycle pedals to charge it is apparently the real deal

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This 75 MPH electric car with bicycle pedals to charge it is apparently the real deal

I know, it sounds too crazy to be true, but the Vigoz by French company Cixi is an honest-to-goodness pedalable vehicle with a top speed of up to 120 km/h (75 mph). And it looks pretty slick, too.

I’m not sure if it’s technically an electric “car” since it only has three wheels, but it’s definitely an electric vehicle. I don’t think we can quite call it an electric bike (or e-trike) either when it’s fully enclosed and looks more like a modern take on a classic Fiat than something you’d see cruising the Paris bike lanes.

But despite the automotive-like exterior, the interior definitely gives you bike mashup vibes. There’s something of a recumbent-style seat that allows riders to lean back while working the bicycle pedals. Yes, that’s right. Bicycle pedals.

The pedals aren’t a direct drive setup, but rather seem to run through a series hybrid generator – something that has become more common on larger cargo e-bikes in the last few years.

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Known as the “Pedaling Energy Recovery System”, the human-integrated drivetrain is said to “convert human power into bicycle propulsion through electricity, enabling the rider to intuitively control speed and braking by pedaling,” according to New Atlas. That sounds nice in theory, but I think when I surround myself with glass and air conditioning, any ‘intuition’ about bicycle controls goes out the retractable windows.

Riders can also theoretically charge the battery by pedaling, but that’s probably about as effective as filling a swimming pool with a shot glass.

The Vigoz seems positioned for real utility use though, and not just as a quirky alternative vehicle. There’s room for a passenger seated in tandem configuration in the rear, or enough space for a decent amount of cargo. Or the pass through design can be use to carry skis, apparently.

And for safety, the company claims that the frame is built with crumple zones that should help reduce the impact forces on occupants in the event of a collision.

So far, the company says that its prototype has reached speeds topping 100 km/h (62mph), but the final maximum speed of the drivetrain is intended to be 120 km/h (75 mph).

It’s not clear exactly when the vehicle will be available to the public, or what unique regulatory concerns it could face on its path to homologation. The fact that Cixi hasn’t listed a price, or even opened a reservations list for future customers, shows that we could be looking at these prototypes for a while longer.

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Sam Altman on OpenAI’s $850 billion in planned buildouts: ‘People are worried. I totally get that’

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Sam Altman on OpenAI's 0 billion in planned buildouts: 'People are worried. I totally get that'

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

ABILENE, Texas — Sam Altman stood on a patch of hot Texas dirt, the kind that turns to dust storms on dry days and mud slicks after a sudden rain. Behind him stretched the outlines of what will soon be a massive data center complex in the west-central part of the state, where heavy wind often meets extreme heat.

It was a fitting backdrop for the OpenAI CEO to unveil what he calls the largest infrastructure push of the modern internet era: a 17-gigawatt buildout in partnership with Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank.

In less than 48 hours, OpenAI has announced commitments equal to 17 nuclear plants or about nine Hoover Dams. The plan will require the amount of electricity needed to power more than 13 million U.S. homes.

The scale is staggering, even for a company that’s raised a record amount of private market cash and seen its valuation swell to $500 billion. At roughly $50 billion per site, OpenAI’s projects add up to about $850 billion in spending, nearly half of the $2 trillion global AI infrastructure surge HSBC now forecasts.

Altman understands the concern. But he rejects the idea that the spending spree is overkill.

“People are worried. I totally get that. I think that’s a very natural thing,” Altman told CNBC on Tuesday from the site of the first of its mega data centers in Abilene. “We are growing faster than any business I’ve ever heard of before.”

Altman insisted that the building boom is in response to soaring demand, highlighting the tenfold jump in ChatGPT usage over the past 18 months. He said a network of supercomputing facilities is what’s required to maximize the capabilities of AI.

Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank unveil $400 billion Stargate data center expansions

“This is what it takes to deliver AI,” Altman said. “Unlike previous technological revolutions or previous versions of the internet, there’s so much infrastructure that’s required, and this is a small sample of it.”

The biggest bottleneck for AI isn’t money or chips — it’s electricity. Altman has put money into nuclear companies because he sees their steady, concentrated output as one of the only energy sources strong enough to meet AI’s enormous demand.

Altman led a $500 million funding round into fusion firm Helion Energy to build a demonstration reactor, and backed Oklo, a fission company he took public last year through his own SPAC. 

Critics warn of a bubble, pointing to how companies like Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom and Microsoft have each added hundreds of billions of dollars in market value on the back of tie-ups with OpenAI, which is burning cash. Nvidia and Microsoft are now worth a combined $8.1 trillion, or equal to about 13.5% of the S&P 500.

Skeptics also say the system looks like a circular financing model. OpenAI is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to projects that rely on partners like Nvidia, Oracle, and SoftBank. Those companies are simultaneously investing in the same projects and then getting paid back through chip sales and data center leases.

Friar has a different perspective, arguing that the entire ecosystem is banding together to meet a historic surge in compute needs. Big tech booms, Friar noted, have always required this kind of bold, coordinated infrastructure buildout.

Altman added that such cycles of overinvesting and underinvesting have marked every past technological revolution. Some people, he said, will surely feel the pain.

“People will get burned on overinvesting and people also get burned on underinvesting and not having enough capacity,” he said. “Smart people will get overexcited, and people will lose a lot of money. People will make a lot of money. But I am confident that long term, the value of this technology is going to be gigantic to society.”

‘More and more demand’

OpenAI’s partners are betting big on that future. Oracle is even reshaping its leadership around it. On Monday, the company promoted Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia to CEO roles, replacing Safra Catz. Magouyrk ran cloud infrastructure and Sicilia was president of Oracle Industries.

“When you think about why make a transition now, it’s really around Oracle’s being set up for success,” Magouyrk told CNBC. “I only see more and more demand from the end users … what looks like near infinite demand for technology.”

Nvidia is fronting equity alongside its chips, including the new Vera Rubin accelerators meant to power the next wave of AI workloads. The Abilene facility is being leased by Oracle.

“Folks like Oracle are putting their balance sheets to work to create these incredible data centers you see behind us,” OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in an interview on site.

She explained that OpenAI will pay operating expenses for the data centers when they’re online, while Nvidia’s investments are getting the project up and running.

“But importantly, they will get paid for all those chips as those chips get deployed,” Friar said, referring to the arrangement with Nvidia.

OpenAI's Sarah Friar: 'Full ecosystem' needs to come together to address compute crunch

Friar, who previously helped take Block public as CFO and then guided Nextdoor to the public market as CEO, pointed to the balancing act between equity, debt and operating expenses. She said that the facilities breaking ground now are aimed at bringing new capacity online next year.

“But then it’s about what gets built for 2027, 2028, and 2029,” she said. “What we see today is a massive compute crunch. There’s not enough compute to do all the things that AI can do, and so we need to get it started — and we need to do it as a full ecosystem.”

As for OpenAI’s long-term relationship with Microsoft, “They’re a major partner,” Friar said, adding that the company will continue to be a key supplier of compute capacity.

She hinted that more developments are on the way with Microsoft, and that she’s “pleased that we are where we are, but not fully ready to announce everything yet.”

In Friar’s current role, the numbers are much bigger than they ever were at the two companies she took public. Eventually OpenAI investors will expect returns on their hefty investments, but Altman said that the question of an IPO is “complicated.”

“I assume that someday we will be a public company,” he told CNBC. “I have mixed feelings about it … for now, we’re certainly able to raise a lot of capital in private markets.”

He said that being public could make long-term investments harder, given the need to meet Wall Street’s expectations on a quarterly basis. But it would open up access to a broader base of investors, he said.

“I think that the world should, if people want to, own shares in OpenAI. I think that’s awesome, and I want that to happen,” Altman said.

In the near term, the story is about many billions of dollars plowed into chips and data centers in places like Abilene, and eventually in New Mexico, Ohio and elsewhere.

But OpenAI isn’t just about infrastructure. In May, the company made the stunning announcement that it had acquired Jony Ive’s nascent devices startup for about $6.4 billion. Bringing in the designer of the iPhone and the rest of Apple’s most popular products wasn’t an accident.

While in Texas, Altman hinted at hardware that could reshape how people use computers in their everyday lives.

The OpenAI CEO said computers have never before been able to truly “understand and think,” and that breakthrough creates the chance to invent an entirely new way of using them.

He cautioned that it will take time before OpenAI has anything ready to ship. Even when it gets there, the company plans to release only a “small family of devices,” he said. But the potential, Altman said, is “something big” and worth pursuing.

WATCH: OpenAI CFO: Need partners like Oracle and Microsoft to meet demand

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OpenAI’s first data center in $500B Stargate project is open in Texas, with sites coming in New Mexico and Ohio

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OpenAI's first data center in 0B Stargate project is open in Texas, with sites coming in New Mexico and Ohio

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar: 'More compute, more revenue' in response to concern on Oracle, Nvidia deals

ABILENE, Texas — OpenAI and Oracle are betting big on America’s AI future, bringing online the flagship site of the $500 billion Stargate program, a sweeping infrastructure push to secure the compute needed to power the future of artificial intelligence.

The debut site in Abilene, Texas, about 180 miles west of Dallas, is up and running, filled with Oracle Cloud infrastructure and racks of Nvidia chips.

The data center, which is being leased by Oracle, is one of the most notable physical landmarks to emerge from an unprecedented boom in demand for infrastructure to power AI. Over $2 trillion in AI infrastructure has been planned around the world, according to an HSBC estimate this week.

OpenAI is leading the way.

In addition to the $500 billion Stargate project, the startup on Monday announced an equity investment deal with Nvidia that will add an estimated $500 billion worth of data centers in the coming years. Since 2019, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, providing loads of access to Azure credits. Additionally, OpenAI contracts with smaller cloud companies for additional compute capacity and help operating its infrastructure.

One building on the Abilene site is operational while another is nearly complete. The campus has the potential to ultimately scale past a gigawatt of capacity, OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told CNBC. That would be enough electricity to power about 750,000 U.S. homes.

The data center construction plans are important enough that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang personally engaged in last-minute negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the weekend to get in on the action, CNBC reported earlier on Tuesday.

“People are starting to recognize just the sheer scale that will be required,” Friar said. “We’re just getting going here in Abilene, Texas, but you’ll see this all around the United States and beyond.”

The scale of the project’s construction was necessary to supply the amount of compute required to operate OpenAI’s models, Friar said.

“What we see today is a massive compute crunch,” she said. “There’s not enough compute to do all the things that AI can do.”

OpenAI's Sarah Friar: 'Full ecosystem' needs to come together to address compute crunch

A bold bet on AI infrastructure

OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, which is helping fund the project, announced on Tuesday five additional Stargate sites across Texas, New Mexico, Ohio and an additional unnamed site in the Midwest. That brings the size of the initiative to nearly 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion of investment over the next three years, which includes an existing $300 billion agreement between OpenAI and Oracle.

While companies like Oracle are helping fund the data center construction, OpenAI will ultimately be the one to pay for the computing capacity as an operating expense, Friar said. Although Nvidia is putting in equity to jumpstart the project, Friar said the chipmaker will get paid for all graphics processing units (GPUs) that it provides as those chips get deployed.

Friar said OpenAI will generate $13 billion in revenue this year, and that the company plans to help pay for the construction using its own cash flow and debt financing.

The Stargate name will refer to all OpenAI infrastructure projects going forward, CNBC reported this week. Together with CoreWeave and other partners, the companies say they are ahead of schedule to meet their full 10-gigawatt commitment by the end of 2025.

Friar told CNBC the shovels going into the ground today are laying foundations for compute that won’t come online until 2026, starting with Nvidia next-generation Vera Rubin chips.

Data center buildings are under construction during a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.

Shelby Tauber | Reuters

“No one in the history of man built data centers this fast,” Friar said, adding that the entire ecosystem has to work together to meet demand.

Critics have questioned the circular funding behind Stargate — OpenAI committing hundreds of billions of dollars to projects while suppliers like Nvidia are also investing directly into those same buildouts.

Friar said history shows that technology booms require bold infrastructure bets.

“When the internet was getting started, people kept feeling like, ‘Oh, we’re over-building, there’s too much,'” Friar said. “Look where we are today, right?”

The project also carries political weight. OpenAI and Oracle first unveiled Stargate alongside President Donald Trump at the White House in January. Friar called Trump “the president of this AI era,” pointing to Washington’s role in framing the technology as both an economic engine and a national security priority. Trump was briefed on the Nvidia investment into OpenAI during a state visit to the U.K. earlier this month.

Oracle says the project will employ more than 6,000 construction workers daily and deliver nearly 1,700 long-term jobs.

In a paper published Tuesday about OpenAI’s infrastructure plans, the company wrote that its data center buildout could help reshape the American power grid with new technologies and help the U.S. exert global influence.

— CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this story.

WATCH: OpenAI CFO: Need partners like Oracle and Microsoft to meet demand

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