The rapid expansion of AI workloads is reshaping technical requirements across the data center industry, according to Jim Buie, CEO of ValorC3 Data Centers.
In the United States alone, Buie noted that “there’s over 4,500 data centers that exist, and those are traditionally air-cooled data centers.” But AI and high-performance computing (HPC) are changing that baseline. “What AI and new high-performance compute require are data centers that are more hybrid — that can do both liquid cooling and, obviously, air cooling, which is still relevant and will be for a long time,” he said in an interview with RCR Wireless News.
The shift toward AI infrastructure is also driving changes in physical design, including heavier racks and reinforced flooring. “Structural concrete floors are incorporated into design — heavy racks,” Buie explained, highlighting the increased weight and density of AI systems compared to traditional enterprise IT loads.
However, beyond floor loading and cooling methods, speed has become a defining factor. “What’s most important is the speed of deployment,” he said, adding that operators must rethink design so they can “construct them quickly, efficiently, and meet timelines that customers are demanding with these deployments.”
While traditional enterprise demand remains steady — supporting workloads such as ERP and EHR systems — AI customers are arriving with far more defined technical expectations.
“I would say what’s different with AI workloads, in particular, is they are still very much defining the standards of what their liquid cooling solution might be and how they want the data center operators in the industry to deploy liquid cooling,” Buie said.
AI customers typically come prepared with detailed specifications. “Someone coming with an AI cluster to deploy in a data center knows exactly what they want, whether it’s the SLAs or the vendor preferences that they bring to the table,” he said. By contrast, “enterprises are still looking for guidance in those areas.”
On cooling technologies, Buie described a fast-evolving landscape. “Certainly, cooling to the chip is more mainstream,” he said, while immersion cooling could become more common over time.
ValorC3 evaluates options ranging from rear-door heat exchangers to direct-to-chip liquid cooling while maintaining flexibility for future immersion deployments. But for Buie, reliability outweighs experimentation.
“Most importantly, our value proposition for clients is to have 100% uptime,” he said. “We certainly want to do that in a cost-effective way, but we care most about uptime.”
