SpaceX has bought $329M worth of Tesla Megapacks so far this year

In addition to providing substantial backup power that can be tapped in a second or less, batteries can provide extra power to GPUs when they demand it. AI data centers don’t draw power consistently. Rather, their power demand ramps up and down depending on the demands of training AI models and running inference.

Such peaks can incur significant charges from a local utility or overwhelm on-site generators. Batteries help smooth out those peaks, lowering costs while ensuring that the data center can operate consistently.