Susana Schwartz
In a recent RCRTech Rack-to-RAN episode with JLL’s Sean Farney, vice president, Data Center Strategy, there was compelling discussion about “power, speed, and scale” in the data center industry. With a general CAGR of 20% for the data center space, “demand is through the roof,” and the demand for AI data center space to support GPU compute has doubled to about 39%. He talks of a relatively low availability of inventory, rents climbing, and a robust pipeline of data center builds of about 8GW. Because it’s a sellers market, buyers are having difficulty finding finished inventory and land with the power to support AI infrastructure.Get the “digital dirt” on what happens now that the low-hanging fruit is gone and GW campuses of 1000 acres or more are needed to accommodate insatiable demand for more data.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
Rack-to-RAN: JLL VP Sean Farney dishes “digital dirt” on the industry rethink about how, where, and how fast to build data centers: record-low availability, rising rents, and a seller’s market driven by hyperscalers racing to secure power and land.
ABI on DC impact on telcos: Why should it make telcos uneasy? AI’s insatiable need for compute and power changes where value accumulates in the digital stack.
so telcos should rethink “moving up the stack,” and ABI’s Leo Gerg explains why.
More orbital DC talk: China is planning space-based AI data centers over the next five years, which Global Data’s Martina Raveni says “is a promising approach,” especially since “space is very cold,” not to mention full of “unlimited solar power.”
AI Today: What You Need to Know
CoreWeave legal woes: Just as Nvidia expands its partnership and invests $2b in CoreWeave, multiple class action lawsuits are being filed against CoreWeave, with investors alleging they were misled about capacity and revenue guidance.
Igneo purchase from Vault: Igneo Infrastructure Partners has bought the data center portfolio of 7 operational colocation and enterprise data centers from Vault Digital Infrastructure, which is owned by CVC DIF, Northleaf, Landmark Dividend.
Tower Semiconductor-Nvidia partner: In pursuit of higher throughput, Tower Semiconductor and NVIDIA are working on 1.6T data center optical modules that can enable up to 2x data-rate than prior silicon photonics solutions.
Nvidia in Israel: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the impact of the Nvidia “Israel 1” supercomputer in northern Israel could be “very deep,” arguing that large-scale AI infrastructure can spark downstream growth in startups, universities, and industry.
Alphabet resets AI spending: Alphabet said its capex spend in 2026 could be more than double what the company spent in 2025, with a focus on AI compute capacity for Google DeepMind and cloud customer demand. A16z raised $1.7B for AI: VC firm Andreessen Horowitz raised a whopping new $15 billion in funding, with $1.7 billion going to its infrastructure team, which spans AI firms like Black Forrest Labs, Cursor, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Fal.
Hotels benefit from DC boom: Construction for dozens of AI infrastructure projects across the U.S. is giving a boost to hotels in remote areas, where occupancy is increasing because of data centers and related infrastructure projects.
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