The United States needs double the energy it has to power rapidly emerging artificial intelligence operations, U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday.

Trump said he would give emergency declarations to allow companies working on AI to start building plants "almost immediately" given intensive competition with China.

"The big problem is we need double the energy we currently have in the United States, can you imagine, for AI to really be as big as we want to have it," Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davis, Switzerland, by video link.