AI agents make 2.7M messages a power problem

OpenAI announced a swarm of more than 10,000 agents that sent 2.7 million messages to solve a longstanding math problem. WIRED’s power analysis says a run like that likely consumes tens of millions of dollars in processing power, and notes an independent estimate putting a heavy Claude session above the energy needed to run two refrigerators. Builders should budget by agent fan-out and run length—not user prompt count—because Google’s €13B nuclear bet shows infrastructure is already being bought around workloads that have not arrived.