#data-centers

#data-centers

Nearly all leading artificial intelligence developers are focused on building AI models that mimic the way humans reason, but new research shows these cutting-edge systems can be far more energy intensive, adding to concerns about AI's strain on power grids. AI reasoning models used 30 times more power on average to respond to 1,000 written prompts than alternatives without this reasoning capability or which had it disabled, according to a study released Thursday.

The data center boom is fully underway, and the numbers are staggering: billions of dollars in costs, millions of square feet worth of buildings, gigawatts of energy, and millions of gallons of water used per day. But before these AI-fueling behemoths can get up and running, there's an extensive amount of prep work needed to build the infrastructure those data centers rely upon, with a whole other set of staggering costs, material flows, and resource requirements.

In a complaint filed on November 25 with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Monitoring Analytics, LLC, an independent market monitor for PJM, requested that the regulator mandate that the energy wholesaler only add large data centers to its system if all customers can be reliably served. "PJM is currently proposing to allow the interconnection of large new data center loads that it cannot serve reliably and that will require load curtailments (black outs) of the data centers or of other customers at times," the complaint read.

Before getting into the details, Roberto Ytaysaba, who is from Brazil, wants to make one thing perfectly clear: neither he nor the Anace Indigenous people, whom he leads, are against progress. We're not against progress if it respects the communities, nature, spirituality, the autonomy of [native] peoples and Convention 169, he clarifies, one recent morning in his village. They've had electricity here since the 1980s. The school teaches ethnomathematics to the children.

During the months following OpenAI's announcement of its blockbuster AI chatbot ChatGPT just over three years ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai pulled the fire alarm. The search giant's management issued a "code red " over what Pichai saw as an imminent disruption to its core business - a warranted level of caution, in retrospect, considering ChatGPT's meteoric rise in popularity and influence.

For two decades, the playbook for Big Tech was fairly simple and extremely successful: Create disruptive innovations, deliver blinding growth rates and keep a lid on spending. A handful of behemoths like Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. used this formula to seize market share from legacy businesses and power the US stock market to record after record.

Doherty's story began when he noticed a rise in bizarre medical conditions among the county's 45,000 residents, linked to toxins in the local water. Working with the county health office, the rancher-turned-official began a survey of 70 wells throughout his jurisdiction - 68 of which, his testing found, violated the federal limit for nitrates in drinking water. Of the first 30 homes he visited, Doherty told RS that 25 residents had recently had miscarriages, while six had lost a kidney.

Digital Realty and a consortium of Equinix and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are both trying to acquire the Scandinavian company atNorth. Partners Group, the owner of atNorth, is reportedly aiming for around €4.5 billion for the pan-Nordic data center operator. This is according to Bloomberg, based on sources. atNorth operates data centers in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. Partners Group acquired the company in January 2022.

That's the warning from Wall Street and investors, if the recent pace of mega bond offerings from the likes of Alphabet Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. continues in 2026. These sales have capped a record year of global issuance. With tech firms expected to turn to debt for as much as $1.5 trillion by 2028 to fund expansion in artificial intelligence and data centers, that could widen spreads across the whole market, Morgan Stanley argues.

Global investors are focusing on Samsung Electronics as the group sets out a five-year artificial intelligence investment programme worth $310 billion over the coming five-year period, with analysis from Sunnov Investment Pte. Ltd. highlighting how the plan reshapes expectations for capital spending across the semiconductor industry. The commitment concentrates on AI specific semiconductors and on domestic manufacturing capacity in South Korea.

A Texas company has paid well over $90 million to buy a pair of data centers in Santa Clara in a sign that investors still hunger for these sites amid the artificial intelligence boom. The data centers are located at 4650 and 4700 Old Ironsides drives in Santa Clara, a short distance from Levi's Stadium. Centersquare, a Texas-based data center-oriented real estate firm, acted through affiliates to pay $97 million in cash for the adjacent data centers,

The US is racing ahead in artificial intelligence, but its biggest obstacle is more than chips, rare earths, or talent - it's electricity, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. The US power grid is already straining under the surge of data centers fueling AI models, with these massive facilities now accounting for about 6% of total US electricity demand.

"In the next couple of years, it's going to be 600 kilowatts, and then we're going to a megawatt," Tim Heidel, CEO of Veir, told TechCrunch.

A critical turning point in this development occurred in October when Minnesota state regulators greenlit the acquisition of Allete by asset management behemoth BlackRock - set to become Allete's majority stakeholder - and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Allete owns Minnesota Power, the main electric utility in northern Minnesota. The approval came against significant community opposition and, as Truthout previously reported, an administrative law judge's report that strongly recommended against the deal.

Two of the world's biggest data center developers have projects in Nvidia Corp.'s hometown that may sit empty for years because the local utility isn't ready to supply electricity. In Santa Clara, California, where the world's biggest supplier of artificial-intelligence chips is based, Digital Realty Trust Inc. applied in 2019 to build a data center. Roughly six years later, the development remains an empty shell awaiting full energization.

Savills puts this down to the limited availability of new facilities coming to the market, rather than a lack of demand. The underlying strength of demand, it said, is reflected in the total contracted power capacity, which has risen to nearly 14,500MW, up 12% year-on-year. Around a quarter of take-up is now pre-let compared with less than 20% three years ago.