data centers Archives - Learners Live

AI Boom to Drive Data Center Electricity Demand to 20% of US Total by 2035

William Attardi on July 21, 2026

Data centers in the US are projected to consume 20% of the nation’s electricity by 2035, a significant rise from 5.9% this year. The increase reflects a dramatic surge in energy demand, particularly in states like Virginia and Texas, where data centers are heavily clustered. BloombergNEF forecasts data center power requirements will reach 194 gigawatts, underscoring the sector’s escalating impact on national power consumption over the next decade. AI Boom to Drive Data Center Electricity Demand to 20% of US Total by 2035 – Bloomberg

As AI Companies Race for Power, Amazon and Google Have the Lead by Jinjoo Lee

William Attardi on June 29, 2026

Amazon has an incumbent advantage, and Google stands out for some innovative approaches. The rapid adoption of AI has intensified power demand among hyperscale cloud companies, with Amazon and Google at the forefront. Amazon’s US self-built data centers now use up to 9 gigawatts of power, a figure comparable to an entire state’s generation capacity. Google and Microsoft trail with capacities around 5 gigawatts each, while Meta sits at 4 gigawatts. The competition is not merely about expansion but also about securing reliable, scalable power sources to meet the growing requirements of AI workloads. All the hyperscalers have also placed bets on novel technology providers that promise to eventually supply cheap, clean, reliable and fast energy. These range from small modular nuclear reactors, advanced geothermal and novel batteries to solar energy beamed in from space. SpaceX and Google are even eyeing data centers in space. As AI Companies Race for Power, Amazon and Google Have the Lead – WSJ

BriteSwitch: Commercial Lighting Rebates Are Still Widely Available

William Attardi on June 18, 2026

As energy demand continues to rise, driven in part by new data centers built to support the growth of artificial intelligence, both homes and businesses are feeling the pressure of higher utility bills. For commercial customers, those increases are bringing renewed attention to energy-saving projects. One of the most familiar options, lighting upgrades, is once again becoming a way for businesses to help offset rising operating costs. Support for commercial lighting rebates remains strong and help make an even stronger case for lighting upgrades. Currently, 75% of the U.S.has access to an active commercial lighting rebate program. Rising Electric Rates Make Lighting Upgrades Worth Another Look

Can Light Solve AI’s Energy Bottleneck? by Nick New

William Attardi on June 12, 2026

The increasing energy requirements to power AI is unsustainable, with concerns also growing about the environmental damage that supplying such energy could cause. We are now at an inflection point. Traditional electrical data transfer methods are reaching their limits, with NVIDIA showing its hand by recently investing $4 billion in two photonics companies, Coherent Corp. and Lumentum. NVIDIA is betting on a future where data is transmitted via light (photons) rather than electricity. Photonics can be integrated directly onto silicon chips to enable scalability and efficiency improvements over electricity. The crux of photonics’ efficiency gain is simple: Light travels faster and carries more information, while producing less heat than electrons. This results in dramatically higher compute density, lower power consumption, and superior thermal performance to overcome the limits imposed by the rise of dark silicon on conventional chips. Can light solve AI’s energy bottleneck? | Laser Focus World

Report: Global Data Center Capex Projection Passes $1 Trillion

William Attardi on June 11, 2026

According to a recently published report by Dell’Oro Group, the worldwide data center capex outlook for 2026 was raised as hyperscale AI deployments accelerated, complemented by continued investments in general-purpose infrastructure and rising component costs. Dell’Oro Group’s Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report details the data center infrastructure capital expenditures of each of the ten largest Cloud service providers Additional highlights from the 1Q 2026 Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report:

The global data center capex outlook was raised to more than $1 trillion for 2026.
The Top 4 US cloud providers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—increased data center capex by 78 percent.
Dell led server OEM revenue in the quarter, followed by Supermicro and Lenovo, while white-box vendors serving the hyperscale market accounted for the majority of server revenue. Nearly all server vendors benefited from higher memory-driven system pricing.

Report: Global Data Center Capex Projection Passes $1 Trillion

DOE Issues Request for AI Information

William Attardi on May 28, 2026

(DOE) The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is helping ensure America leads the world in Artificial Intelligence (AI) while helping to lower energy costs by co-locating data centers and new energy infrastructure on DOE lands. To support this effort, DOE’s Office of Policy released a Request for Information (RFI) the full PDF RFI to inform possible use of DOE land for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure development to support growing demand for data centers. DOE has identified 16 potential sites uniquely positioned for rapid data center construction, including in-place energy infrastructure with the ability to fast-track permitting for new energy generation such as nuclear. The Department is seeking input from data center developers, energy developers, and the broader public to further advance this partnership. DOE Issues Request for AI Information

NVIDIA to Invest Up to $500B in AI Data Center Construction in US

William Attardi on May 28, 2026

NVIDIA is working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.NVIDIA Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona. NVIDIA is building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas. Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months. Within the next four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL. . NVIDIA AI supercomputers are the engines of a new type of data center created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence — AI factories. NVIDIA to Invest Up to $500B in AI Data Center Construction in US – tEDmag

AI Is Enabling the Next Generation of Distributor Workflows by Michael Delgado

William Attardi on May 26, 2026

Workflows at distributors have been more or less the same for decades. Quoting, order entry, PO tracking and invoicing still rely on emails, spreadsheets and ERPs with manual effort expected to close the gap. That model worked when volumes were lower and expectations were more forgiving, but the world is changing.AI does not just speed up existing processes, it changes where the work starts. Instead of manually decoding customer requests from zero, teams can rely on AI to interpret imprecise inputs and return accurate product matches. Translating requests into usable data becomes a background process that happens before a request ever reaches a sales rep. AI also has a level of adaptability that traditional software lacks. It learns over time, picking up on customer preferences and surfacing relevant SKUs and frequently ordered items preemptively. The result is a faster, more accurate quoting process, and reps who are free to spend time with customers instead of spreadsheets. AI has moved from a competitive advantage to a baseline requirement to keep pace. AI Is Enabling the Next Generation of Distributor Workflows | Electrical Wholesaling

SpaceX Wants to Blast Data Centers Into Orbit. Here’s What It May Take by Claire Hogan

William Attardi on May 5, 2026

Earlier this year, SpaceX filed an application with the FCC petitioning to launch up to a million satellites as part of an “orbital data center.” It has also become a big part of Elon Musk’spitch to investors ahead of his massive SpaceX IPO. We asked an engineer to break down the biggest technical hurdles and costly barriers to putting data centers in space. Watch the video to see what it would actually take to make it work. SpaceX Wants to Blast Data Centers Into Orbit. Here’s What It May Take. – WSJ