all AI to date · as of June 2026~5.1 billion compute tokens · ~1,500 kWh
$50 to charity: water · $50 to the Clean Air Task Force · standing minimum 10 to 25x
Sustainability
Building Convexity has run billions of tokens through AI: about ~1,500 kWh, ~2,700 L of water, and ~610 kg of CO2 so far. We measure it from real usage and give back far more than we take: 20x the water and ~80x the carbon, to charity: water and the Clean Air Task Force.
The footprint
Nobody can measure this to the decimal; it shifts with the model, the data center, and the grid. So we estimate from our real token counts, leave out what cache reuse makes free, and keep every coefficient sourced. Here is the tally so far.
What it adds up to
Two $50 gifts, measured against the footprint above. Not a flat number, but a ratio that climbs with every token we run.
For the air · $50 to CATF
Building Convexity has emitted about ~610 kg of CO2e. Our $50 to the Clean Air Task Force covers offsets on the order of 50 tonnes, roughly ~80x what we've put out.
~80xour carbon, covered
For the water · $50 to charity: water
The same compute has drawn about ~2,700 L of water. Our $50 to charity: water funds roughly 55,000 L of clean water for people who lack it, 20x our draw. A give-back, not a recapture.
20xour water, covered
$50 to charity: water, $50 to the Clean Air Task Force, as of June 2026. Footprint measured from real token counts; coverage is what each gift funds over what we've actually used.
When an estimate could go either way, we take the number that makes our footprint look worse. A cooling-heavy or fossil-heavy data center can run several times higher than the figures above, so we assume it does.
Offsetting the carbon is almost suspiciously cheap: pennies. We refuse to treat that as a license to give pennies. The rule is to give at least 10 to 25x our footprint; right now we're at 20x the water and ~80x the carbon, weighted toward clean water, where the unit of impact is a whole human life.
No carbon-credit roulette, no planting receipts nobody can verify. Two organizations with public, independently scrutinized track records: charity: water and the Clean Air Task Force.
Where it goes
For the water
Cooling the machines that run AI consumes real water. We can't pour it back, so we fund access for people who have none. charity: water sends 100% of public donations to the field and proves every project with GPS and photos.
For the air
The energy behind every token emits carbon. CATF works on high-leverage climate policy and neglected technologies, rated a top climate organization by Founders Pledge, which estimates it averts a tonne of CO2e for $0.10 to $1.63.
Convexity is one founder and a stack of machines. We don't have an ESG department or a third-party audit. What we have is a habit: measure the footprint with numbers that don't flatter us, give back several times over, and show our work. Clean water access is not a liter-for-liter offset of data-center cooling, and a carbon donation is not the same as never emitting. We're not claiming neutrality. We're claiming we give back more than we take, and we'll keep the math on this page honest as the estimates improve.
Methodology & sources
Figures are cumulative, estimated from our real compute-token counts: fresh input, output, and cache creation; cache reads are excluded, since they reuse already-computed state for negligible energy and are ~97% of input. Coefficients: 0.3 Wh per 1,000 compute tokens (Epoch AI), 400 g CO2e per kWh (EPA eGRID / IEA), 1.8 L per kWh (UC Riverside). Coverage divides each gift by the charity's own stated rate: $50 to charity: water funds ~55,000 L (~1,100 L per $1); $50 of carbon giving covers ~50 tonnes (~$1 per tonne, inside CATF's $0.10-$1.63 Founders Pledge range). Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI publishes per-token figures, so treat these as order-of-magnitude, which is exactly why we give back many times over, not just to parity.