Opinion
Opinion
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The environmental footprint of an AI data center extends beyond electricity consumption, water requirements and hardware manufacturing. Cooling infrastructure introduces
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Could India host a proportionately bigger piece of this world’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, even while remaining unimportant in terms of
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The Electrical Fault That Changes More Than Data Center Uptime An electrical fault inside an AI data center can create
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Electricity has traditionally earned its value when it reaches a factory, powers a household or crosses a national border through
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The built data center represents an economic paradox. The most conspicuous stage is completed, but a considerable part of economic
- 3 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
While aircraft engines were not originally designed to be used next to a data center, the increasing difficulties of sourcing
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The spare-parts decision is becoming an operational risk An AI data center can have sufficient electrical capacity, advanced cooling infrastructure
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
The utmost important question to ask about the AI infrastructure boom is how long will the capacity actually be relevant?
- 3 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Whilst there may be obvious risks in relation to new restrictions, delays to approvals or local objections, data center development
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
New AI infrastructure can be financed, land can be acquired, cooling designed and computing infrastructure ordered, but there is no
- 3 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Nearby Construction Can Change the Electrical Conditions Around an AI Data Center An AI data center can secure power capacity
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A Change in Ownership Can Change the Sustainability Equation A data center can change hands without changing its physical infrastructure.
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center can remain standing and still lose its ability to serve the systems that depend on it. A
- 3 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
The language around intelligence is starting to have as much importance as the structures that support it. As the physical
- 3 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Michigan’s relationship with the data center industry is entering a politically complicated phase. What once appeared to be a straightforward
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A failed accelerator can become a financial problem long before its replacement arrives. The hardware may remain under warranty, yet
- 7 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
The most consequential decision in a data center may not concern the processors inside its servers. It may concern the
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A financing strategy can reveal as much about an industry’s maturity as the projects it helps fund. Barclays‘ exploration of
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A data-center investment decision can change long before a developer pours concrete, secures power or installs the first server rack.
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The infrastructure risk outside the server rack An AI cluster can have sufficient computing capacity, reliable power and cooling designed
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Alphabet’s investment in artificial intelligence is changing a familiar corporate calculation: how much capital should a technology company return to
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
The most consequential decision in AI infrastructure may not concern which processors to buy or how quickly a new facility
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A GPU cluster can remain operational long after the engineers who configured it have moved on. But that doesn’t guarantee
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A data center can look financially compelling long before it becomes commercially productive. Developers can secure a site, arrange financing,
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
AI Infrastructure Buyers Must Audit Software Licenses Before Deployment An AI infrastructure purchase can appear commercially sound until software requirements
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most consequential part of a liquid cooling system may be the part nobody sees. Behind the racks, processors and
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A data center’s thermal output presents an unusual engineering contradiction. The same computing equipment that generates heat requiring continuous removal
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center can have an efficient cooling system, carefully planned computing infrastructure and a strategy for securing electricity, yet
- 3 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The next AI infrastructure procurement decision may depend on what happens after equipment fails A failed component can turn a
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A data center can meet every technical requirement in its original specification and still become a difficult commercial asset when
- 3 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The opportunity is real, but the operating model matters A data centre can sell computing capacity, maintain cooling stability and
- 7 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most revealing question about America’s electricity crisis isn’t how much power artificial intelligence consumes. It’s why an economy with
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
An AI system can be ready to run while the infrastructure required to support it remains unfinished. That gap between
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A model update can pass every internal benchmark and still leave a production application struggling to perform its most basic
- 7 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
An AI data center can have enough electrical capacity, installed batteries, standby generators and sophisticated cooling equipment without guaranteeing that
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center can secure the electricity, land and financing required to operate without securing the one thing that can
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A cooling loop can satisfy its temperature targets while quietly developing a problem that its monitoring system can’t immediately identify.
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A data center project can accumulate announced capacity and development milestones before it produces a single usable GPU-hour. Developers may
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Malaysia’s next phase of data center development may depend as much on the cost of accessing electricity as on the
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Why AI Infrastructure Needs a Different Deployment Strategy The next important decision in AI infrastructure may not concern how many
- 7 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
An initial public offering can fail without damaging an entire industry. Firmus’ abandoned A$44 billion listing, however, arrived at a
- 3 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
An AI facility can represent billions of dollars in investment and still depend on a surprisingly narrow set of physical
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Japan’s AI Expansion Depends on More Than Access to Advanced Chips An AI infrastructure strategy can secure advanced processors, reserve
- 7 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
One of the most consequential assumptions in the AI economy isn’t how intelligent a model becomes. But how quickly its
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Thermal Portability Is Becoming a Procurement Decision An AI server that performs well in one data center may struggle in
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center investment announcement can signal a developer’s financial intentions, outline proposed capacity and demonstrate confidence in a region.
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
India’s data center ambitions face a financial test that rarely receives the same attention as computing capacity, artificial intelligence investment
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A country doesn’t need a large domestic population to justify serious investment in the infrastructure that powers the global digital
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Singapore’s AI Infrastructure Buyers May Need to Think Beyond Compute Capacity A procurement team evaluating AI infrastructure in Singapore may
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most consequential advantage in AI infrastructure may be the least exciting one: the ability to finish what a company
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The GPU reservation appears available, the deployment window looks reasonable, and the infrastructure dashboard shows enough compute resources to accommodate
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Scotland is confronting an unusual industrial question: how much infrastructure should a country prepare to accommodate before it knows how
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A construction site can look orderly on an environmental assessment and emerge from development as a fundamentally different landscape. Excavators
- 3 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A Capacity Commitment Is Only as Useful as Its Cooling Margin A data center contract can specify GPU quantities, power
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The Environmental Cost of Reserved AI Capacity Reserved AI capacity provides an important service when businesses need reliable access to
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The cost of serving a data center can rise when grid constraints require additional infrastructure or limit the availability of
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
AI Capacity Is Becoming a Thermal Planning Problem AI infrastructure planning increasingly depends on how much compute a facility can
- 7 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most consequential part of Finland’s decision involving Google’s planned data centers in Muhos and Kajaani isn’t the temporary halt
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Water scarcity can persist without becoming an immediate operational constraint until a major industrial load increases pressure on an already
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Capacity Is Becoming a Contractual Question A Neocloud contract can appear straightforward until the buyer has to determine whether the
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center can look insignificant from a national spreadsheet and disruptive from the window of a nearby apartment. Both
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Loudoun County’s data-center economy presents an uncomfortable problem that doesn’t fit neatly into the usual argument over whether development has
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
India’s artificial intelligence expansion is beginning to expose a question that sits outside the usual language of chips, models and
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A small Nebraska village has introduced an uncomfortable question into the economics of AI infrastructure: whether a site can retain
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
AI Inference Is Starting to Meet a Power Constraint The next location decision for an AI workload may begin with
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Australia is approaching a point where its data center strategy will say as much about the country’s energy and water
- 3 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
An underground data center can reduce the amount of above-ground development in some site configurations because critical computing infrastructure can
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The grid connection may no longer tell the whole story A customer can hear that an AI facility has secured
- 4 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
Reserved GPUs Mean Little Without Deliverable Power AI infrastructure capacity can be contracted by GPU quantity, deployment window, location and
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most difficult question surrounding AI’s environmental impact is no longer whether the technology can reduce emissions. It clearly can,
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A data-center deal can look straightforward from the outside, with a site, a power requirement, a construction plan, and a
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center can be one of the most technically sophisticated buildings in a city and still look as though
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
AI customers may soon discover that reserving GPUs and reserving usable AI capacity are not necessarily the same commercial act.
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most consequential change in AI infrastructure may not come from another record-breaking data center. It could come from a
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A six-trillion-dollar annual revenue requirement changes the question surrounding artificial intelligence infrastructure. The immediate infrastructure debate has increasingly focused on
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The deployment date may depend on infrastructure that customers never see An AI customer can reserve future compute capacity while
- 5 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
An AI rack can have all the processors, electricity and network capacity an operator can secure and still fail to
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A megawatt commitment means little without knowing the conditions attached to it AI infrastructure buyers often ask how many megawatts
- 9 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A GPU Reservation Is Starting to Look Like a Claim on Electricity A customer can reserve thousands of GPUs and
- 8 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Andhra Pradesh is reaching a point where its data center expansion could alter the way the state thinks about electricity
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
The next change in subsea infrastructure may increasingly follow the facilities and regions where digital capacity expands. Cable landing stations
- 5 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A GPU price can look remarkably precise on a procurement spreadsheet. It gives buyers a number that fits neatly into
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
Pennsylvania’s abandoned mines may be hiding something more valuable than coal ever was: infrastructure that could be repurposed for the
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A fiber route can take on new strategic importance when AI workloads require high-capacity connections between geographically separated compute clusters.
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most important number attached to a proposed data center may no longer be its megawatt capacity. It may be
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
A company can sign for GPUs, reserve a data hall and approve an AI budget without securing the one thing
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Europe’s AI infrastructure debate increasingly centers on power, land, permitting and financing, but another constraint sits much closer to the
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The hardest part of scaling AI may no longer sit entirely inside the processor. It is moving into the material
- 5 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
AI capacity can look available long before the surrounding infrastructure is ready A customer can see empty rack positions, available
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Europe is starting to treat data-center electricity use as something that must become more transparent and efficient, rather than simply
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The compute contract may be moving faster than the electricity system AI infrastructure procurement can require customers to commit to
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A number can look enormous before anyone asks what it is being measured against. That is increasingly true in debates
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
Egypt’s latest technology push creates an unusual economic test because the country is expanding several layers of digital capacity simultaneously.
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The Most Valuable Part of a Summit Is Rarely on the Invoice A conference ticket can buy admission, a badge,
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
An AI data center can remain structurally useful even as much of the computing equipment inside it becomes commercially outdated.
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
A data center has an obvious infrastructure footprint. It needs substations, fiber routes, cooling equipment, backup generation, transmission capacity and
- 3 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
The AI Compute Bill May Need a Clock AI customers have become accustomed to thinking about compute through familiar commercial
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar
- Opinions
- Kiara Mandavia
The most difficult question facing the data center industry may not be how much power, water or land computing consumes.
- 4 min
- Kiara Mandavia
- Opinions
- Mahek Mandavia
A growing body of research is examining electricity availability as a computing variable rather than treating data-center demand as entirely
- 4 min
- Mahek Mandavia
- Opinions
- Aakruti Thakkar
AI Resilience Is Becoming a Thermal Architecture Question A customer can buy redundant compute and still discover that the supporting
- 6 min
- Aakruti Thakkar