AI Raises Data Center Costs

Companies’ appetite for artificial intelligence is leading some data center operators to raise commercial lease prices to pay for the added power required, The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

What’s going on: “Data centers, the warehouse-size buildings that house multiple racks of servers, routers and other information-technology equipment—providing the underlying infrastructure for cloud computing—already consume massive amounts of energy. … Data center customers, which range from small businesses to giant cloud providers, are currently eating up power faster than operators can expand capacity.”

In the world data center capital—Northern Virginia—the amount of power available for lease is decreasing even as overall power inventories grow.

A tricky fix: But the answer to the problem may be more complex than simply adding data center capacity.

“Jon Lin, executive vice president and general manager of data center services at Equinix, which operates more than 245 data centers worldwide, said building new data center capacity to keep up with rising demand has become more challenging in recent years. He cites supply-chain constraints, construction and permitting complexities and power availability, among other factors.”