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The Data Center Rundown

Jan 15, 2026

 
Financial strategies for data centers

The substantial investment frenzy surrounding AI-driven datacenter construction continues unabated, yet concerns persist regarding whether this massive capital expenditure can yield clear profits before potentially becoming unsustainable.

Read at The Register→

Microsoft has pledged to absorb the financial burden associated with its data center electricity consumption, aiming to shield customers from potential cost escalations.

Read at Bisnow→

 

Is Microsoft's pledge to cover all data center electricity costs a sustainable model for cloud providers?

DataBank is raising $665 million through the securitization of 36 of its data center facilities.

Read at Bisnow→

 
Data center infrastructure resource challenges

Forecasters suggest that insufficient growth in grid and generation capacity will severely constrain expected future datacenter expansion, causing many industry growth projections to be overly optimistic.

Read at The Register→

Scarcity of fiber routes is becoming the primary limiting factor in the expansion of data centers into secondary U.S. markets, directly influencing investment returns and feasibility of scaling operations.

Read at Global Data Center Hub→

The escalating electricity demands driven by the AI boom necessitate innovative redesigns of electrical power systems within data centers to support future capacity requirements.

Read at Data Center Knowledge→

 
State data center policy changes

Texas's SB6 legislation reassigns grid cost and reliability responsibilities to high-load users, establishing a regulatory precedent that may be adopted across other jurisdictions.

Read at Data Center Knowledge→

 

Should other states adopt Texas's aggressive approach to shifting grid accountability to data centers?

The Governor of Arizona is proposing the elimination of existing tax incentives specifically offered to data center developments within the state.

Read at Bisnow→

 
Data center hardware supply chain

SK Hynix announced a $13 billion investment in a new advanced packaging and testing facility in South Korea designed to alleviate the High Bandwidth Memory shortage fueling the current AI infrastructure expansion.

Read at The Register→

A manufacturer specializing in data center cooling equipment is exploring the establishment of a new factory location in Fort Worth.

Read at Bisnow→

IT infrastructure buyers must prepare for significant price increases across servers, storage, and networking equipment due to a sharp, 63% surge in memory component costs since September, which analysts expect to propagate through the supply chain.

Read at The Register→

 

Will imminent DRAM price spikes force IT budgets to delay critical server purchases?

 
Diversification of data center geography

The national data center landscape is diversifying as various levels of government implement distinct strategies to manage the ongoing expansion and growth across emerging US markets.

Read at Data Center Knowledge→

Duos Edge AI is deploying an edge data center in rural Texas, expanding its edge computing footprint.

Read at Data Center POST→

Driven by artificial intelligence demand and new regulatory considerations, the European data center market configuration is evolving away from the centralized FLAP-D structure toward a more dispersed operational footprint.

Read at Data Center Knowledge→

 
Chatter
The view from Reddit
“Data centers need clean backup power, are hydrogen fuel cell generators actually viable, or still mostly PR?”

An industry participant probes the operational reality of small-scale hydrogen fuel cells for backup power, asking seasoned buyers about CapEx barriers, logistical nightmares, and the utility of remote monitoring features.

Read at r/datacenter→

“The AppStack Was Pirated.”

A former VDI engineer recounts the chaotic discovery that a perpetually licensed Adobe Pro application stack, distributed across dozens of healthcare users, was operating without valid licenses due to a packaging engineer's circumvention of DRM.

Read at r/sysadmin→

“Our country is down”

An IT professional recounts the existential dread of discovering that an entire country's top-level domain has vanished due to apparent registrar mismanagement, finding dark humor in the bureaucratic incompetence of customer support when trying to resolve a national infrastructure failure.

Read at r/sysadmin→

 

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