Stanford Releases 2026 AI Index Report: AI Electricity Demand Has Reached Half of Bitcoin Mining

Odaily News According to the "2026 AI Index Report" released by Stanford University, the overall electricity demand of current AI systems is already close to half the scale of Bitcoin mining and approaches the national electricity consumption levels of Switzerland or Austria.

The report points out that the gap in AI model capabilities between China and the US is narrowing. In 2025, the US released approximately 50 representative models, while China released about 30. Models from institutions such as Anthropic, xAI, Google, OpenAI, Alibaba, and DeepSeek are within the same capability tier.

Furthermore, China leads in terms of AI paper citation share (20.6%) and patent quantity (74.2%), while private AI investment in the US reached $285.9 billion, significantly higher than China's $12.4 billion.