#data-center-infrastructure

#data-center-infrastructure

Data center electricity consumption is on pace to exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours by 2030, up from just 460 TWh in 2024, and it will comprise 10% of the U.S.' power consumption. Utilities ETFs like Virtus Reaves Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:UTES), First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index Fund (NASDAQ:GRID), and First Trust Utilities AlphaDEX Fund (NYSEARCA:FXU) are well positioned to benefit, not just from electricity demand, but all the downstream effects from an ongoing rapid buildout of infrastructure to support them.

The agreement calls for the companies to negotiate separate electricity rate structures with utilities and states. They would commit to paying those rates for power as well as for any necessary infrastructure. Administration officials emphasized that those payments would be made regardless of whether companies use the electricity.

The facility once produced paper, the raw material of the newspaper information age. Now, Borlänge will produce the raw material for AI and the next information age. This declaration by EcoDataCenter's CEO Peter Michelson symbolizes the transformation of industrial sites into critical infrastructure for artificial intelligence development and deployment.

Tech execs are expected at the White House next week to sign what President Trump called a "ratepayer protection pledge" during Tuesday's State of the Union. OpenAI and Amazon are taking part in the "pledge" initiative, the companies confirmed. Others expected include Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI and Oracle, Fox News reported.

Nvidia's investment portfolio operated as a modest initiative valued around $230 million two years ago, focusing on smaller companies and chip designers. By the end of 2025, however, the public equity portfolio alone had reached more than $13 billion, according to its 13F filing. This expansion stems directly from cash generated by Nvidia's core GPU sales, particularly in the data center segment, which have driven record revenue.

But zoom out, and the picture changes dramatically. The stock is up 31% over the past month and 63% year-to-date, riding a wave of AI storage demand that's reshaping the data center landscape. While the broader semiconductor sector, tracked by the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NYSEARCA:SMH), gained 1.51% this week and 13% year-to-date, Western Digital's outperformance tells a specific story about who's winning in AI infrastructure.

Seagate Technology ( NASDAQ:STX) has delivered one of the market's most impressive performances to start 2026. The stock has surged 56.6% year-to-date through February 12, crushing the S&P 500 over the same period. Here's what's more impressive: Seagate is the 5th best performer in the entire S&P500,meaning it's outperforming 99% of other large-cap stocks so far this year! Even more striking: the rally extends a remarkable 335% climb over the past year, transforming what was once a cyclical storage play into an AI infrastructure darling.

In 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space," Musk said. "It will then get ridiculously better to be in space. The only place you can really scale is space. Once you start thinking in terms of what percentage of the sun's power you are harnessing, you realize you have to go to space. You can't scale very much on earth.

Seagate Technology ( ) reported its fiscal second-quarter 2026 earnings yesterday, and the results beat Wall Street expectations on both revenue and earnings per share. The company brought in $2.83 billion in revenue, topping the consensus estimate of around $2.75 billion. On the bottom line, non-GAAP earnings came in at $3.11 per share, well above the expected $2.83. This strong showing was largely driven by robust demand for high-capacity storage solutions needed for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as data centers handling massive AI workloads.

The hardest part about investing in artificial intelligence isn't believing in the technology-it's deciding which companies will actually profit from it. Will chip makers dominate? Cloud providers? Software platforms? Infrastructure builders? The answer is probably all of them, which is why iShares Future AI & Tech ETF (NYSEARCA:ARTY) has become popular for investors wanting broad AI exposure without concentrated bets.

As 2025 comes to an end, it seems fitting to look at how Microsoft's Azure hyperscale cloud is planning to address the second half of the decade. As has become traditional, Azure CTO Mark Russinovich gave his usual look at that future in his presentations at Ignite, this time split into two separate talks on infrastructure and software. The first presentation looked at how the underlying infrastructure of Azure is developing and how the software you use is adapting to use the new hardware.

Nvidia announced Monday that it plans to invest $100 billion in OpenAI in a deal that would give the ChatGPT maker a major leg up in the AI race - access to 10 gigawatts worth of the high-powered GPUs it needs to satisfy its mushrooming growth strategy. What the deal can't guarantee - and what neither company mentioned - is how OpenAI will access the enormous amount of electricity needed to fire up those chips.

( BroadcomNASDAQ:AVGO) has been a standout performer, soaring 120% from its April lows and delivering an astonishing 500% return over the past three years. This meteoric rise is fueled by Broadcom's strategic pivot into artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in data centers, where its custom AI chips and networking solutions are in high demand. The company reportedly ( controls around 70% of the custom AI chip market , serving hyperscale clients like major tech giants Google and Meta PlatformsNASDAQ:META) building AI infrastructure.