The vast water consumption of data centres has been a hot topic of discussion in recent months, while semiconductors appear to have flown under the radar.

The International Energy Agency estimates that a single 100-megawatt data centre requires up to two million liters of water per day. This is the equivalent of the water usage of 6,500 households. One prompt on ChatGPT uses the equivalent of one bottle of water.

Water is used primarily to cool data centres and servers. However, a less talked-about and slightly hidden source of AI’s excessive water consumption is in the manufacturing of semiconductors and chips to power the data centre boom.

Semiconductors are picky about water

Semiconductor manufacturing requires water that has been purified to an extremely high degree. Almost all contaminants, like minerals and dissolved gases, have been removed from it. This helps prevent contamination in the manufacturing process.

Ultrapure water requires special storage and distribution and takes a rigorous process of low electrical conductivity to produce, making it an extremely energy-intensive process.

It takes between 1,400 and 1,600 gallons of water to make 1,000 gallons of ultrapure water. This means that on average, for every 1,000 gallons of ultrapure water produced, around 500 gallons of water are wasted and lost.

Chip production could threaten water supplies

An average chip factory can use around ten million gallons of ultrapure water each day. This is the equivalent of the daily use of 33,000 US households. Like data centres, semiconductor factories also use water in cooling systems and to generate electricity. It is estimated that all of the semiconductor factories world wide use the same amount of water daily as Hong Kong.

As well as the millions of gallons required every day, chip factories also produce waste that contains pollutants like heavy metals and acid wastewater. These heavy metals pollute local water sources and can threaten human health.

What can be done about semiconductor’s water use?

There are several things tech companies can do to reduce water in the AI industry and in semiconductor manufacturing.

Firstly, companies can replace wet processes with dry processes, eliminating unnecessary water use by replacing it with gas. One example of this is using gas instead of water for the etching of chips, instead of submerging them in chemical baths.

Companies can also look to other sources of water, with wastewater recycling and reclamation programs. Chipmaker TSMC managed to replace 12% of its water resources with reclaimed water in 2023, decreasing its use of ultrapure water.

Further to this, TSMC has its own reclaimed water plants to continue these efforts. Its latest plant in Phoenix, Arizona, broke ground in September 2025. It will be operational in 2028 and will convert wastewater to the high-purity water needed for TSMC operations. Its current lab in Phoenix consumes around 4.75 million gallons of water a day, but once the recycling plant becomes operational, it will reduce demand to around 1.2 million gallons daily.