The AI Boom Will Drive up Data Center Costs and the Need for Control
Data centers are the backbone of the digital economy, hosting the servers, networks, and software that power the internet and cloud services. Data centers consume a lot of electricity, accounting for about 1% of the global energy demand in 2019. As AI becomes more widespread and complex, data centers will need to upgrade their hardware and infrastructure to meet the growing demand for AI processing. This will increase the cost of operating data centers in several ways.