Conventional gas turbines are booked out more than seven years, but AI infrastructure needs power now. In a new episode of Latitude Media’s Open Circuit podcast, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig sits down with Stephen Lacey to talk about that gap, and how Arbor is building a different kind of turbine to close it.
GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi’s turbines rely on single-crystal turbine blades, an architecture refined over decades for a slower era of demand growth. Brad explains why that design, as capable as it is, wasn’t built for what AI infrastructure now asks of the grid: firm power, fast, deployed in increments that scale with a site rather than a single monolithic buildout.
Arbor’s turbine runs on a different architecture. Supercritical CO₂ as the working fluid instead of air or steam. Oxy-combustion instead of combustion in open air. A turbine small enough to 3D print, built on manufacturing techniques and materials science that trace back to rocket engine production.
Brad and Stephen talk through air quality and water, and what a power plant leaves behind long after the ribbon cutting. Arbor’s oxy-combustion process produces water rather than consuming it. A gigawatt-scale site could generate roughly a billion gallons a year, in places where water is often harder to secure than power itself.
Brad is direct about the business case: Arbor’s target is to be cheaper than a conventional natural gas plant. A buyer gets zero emissions and water positivity along with it. He gives a timeline for when he expects that to hold, and talks through what’s shifted in the market over the past two years that makes this the moment for a new entrant in turbine manufacturing.