Susana Schwartz
A first – U.S. data center construction outpaces office construction
Bloomberg today reported that U.S. construction spending on data centers officially surpassed spending on office buildings for the first time. Tomorrow, RCR TV will feature an interview with CBRE Data Center Solutions’ executive managing director, Pat Lynch, and research director Gordon Dolven about the trends driving that demand, and the constraints that are working to slow that boom down. Check tomorrow’s newsletter for the link to the interview, and highlights of CBRE’s recent North America Data Center Trends report, which shows an overall vacancy rate in primary markets of 1.4% at year-end (a record low), and a primary market supply increase of 36% year-over-year to 9,432 MWs, surpassing the 34% increase in 2024 (due to accelerated hyperscale demand).
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
Nvidia $1T forecast + AI-RAN partnerships: GTC buzz revolved around Nvidia’s $1 trillion projection for Blackwell and Rubin GPUs through 2027, but it also spotlighted AI-RAN partnerships with Nokia and T-Mobile for inference at the edge.
Meta gets serious about AI chips: Meta’s roadmap for its four MTIA chips span workflows and arc from specialized to general-purpose. The first, the MTIA 300, is in production, and is purpose-built for ranking and recommendations training.
Cognizant enterprise AI focus: Since enterprises want to operationalize AI, but often run into barriers around scale, cost and governance, Cognizant has launched Cognizant AI Factory to move enterprise pilot AI projects to full-scale deployments.
AI Today: What You Need to Know
Roche AI factory: Together with NVIDIA, Roche is building the largest pharma AI factory in the world, embedding AI across the value chain – from drug discovery and clinical development to manufacturing, diagnostics and commercialization.
Nvidia H200 in China: Nvidia has won Beijing’s long-awaited approval to sell its H200 AI chips to China, and, it’s also preparing a version of the Groq AI chip for the Chinese market. This has been a major issue in U.S.-China relations this year.
Samsung – AMD MOU: At Samsung’s chip plant in Pyeongtaek, Korea, CEO Young Hyun Jun joined AMD CEO Lisa Su to align on primary HBM4 supply for the AMD Instinct MI455X GPU and DRAM solutions, codenamed “Venice.”
AMD – Naver sovereign AI: AMD also announced a strategic collaboration with NAVER Cloud to accelerate sovereign AI infrastructure in Korea. AMD compute platforms will be integrated across NAVER Cloud’s AI and cloud offerings.
Micron Q2 results: With memory chip demand soaring, Micron is expected to report 148% revenue growth for the February quarter as average selling prices surge 32% quarter over quarter. Its fiscal Q2 2026 results are due out today.
Fluor 480MW DC in Kentucky: Fluor is moving ahead with a 480 MW data center with builder TeraWulf. The brownfield project in north central Kentucky will be built on 250 acres, with “immediate access” to 480 MW of existing power availability.
AI Energy Conference: Data center developers, power generators, contractors, and government reps will convene at the AI Energy Conference 3 to address the needs of the multi-GW data center proposals for the Appalachian Basin.
