Microsoft is spending $190 billion on capex in 2026 , and the company adds approximately 1 gigawatt of data center capacity every three months globally. But power constraints are proving to be a universal bottleneck: nearly half of planned U.S. data center builds this year have been delayed or canceled due to shortages of electrical infrastructure.
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Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist.\u00a0 Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.\u00a0 ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-23/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Luke James Social Links Navigation Contributor Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
rluker5 Planning on using 1/3 of the total power capacity of a country sounds like it should have had some consideration by people other than yes men. If my whole village had its power cut for the foreseeable future because of chatbots and meme generators id be pissed. Hopefully most of the other data centers planned have more realistic plans in place. Makes you wonder if the hyperscalers have reasonably considered the economic viability of these things. Reply
Findecanor That sounds like the kind of competence in management that we are used to from Microsoft. Reply
Hooda Thunkett Interesting that the Kenyan government is bringing this up. In the U.S. the locals would have forced a referendum that would have resulted in 90% of the voters saying "No!" and it would get built anyway. Reply
S58_is_the_goat Some of the Kenyan residents may die, but it's a sacrifice Microsofts execs/shareholders are willing to take… Reply
bigdragon Data center developers are so greedy and shortsighted that they'd happily build a huge data center on Peurto Rico or Cuba if they could do it cheaply… and officials would approve it because they want the money more than they want reliable electricity and water. The situation in Kenya is the same. Chatbots and electronic hallucinations over people. We need to start treating AI less like the modern equivalent to the 1950's and 1960's space race and more like the duffel bag full of someone else's gambling money that it is. Reply
PEnns Hooda Thunkett said: Interesting that the Kenyan government is bringing this up. In the U.S. the locals would have forced a referendum that would have resulted in 90% of the voters saying "No!" and it would get built anyway. This describes the "AI bubble / "damn the torpedo, full speed ahead" plans in the US perfectly!! 👍 Reply
ejolson I'm not sure if the politicians or the venture capitalists are more short sighted. In one possible scenario the AI buildout would also build so much power infrastructure that average consumer use would be so small in comparison it could be provided for free. Said another way, technological innovation is not supposed to be a zero sum game played through the financial reallocation of existing resources. Reply
vinay2070 All these for what? To reduce more jobs and to compete with China? But China already said we wont replace people with robots. Reply
BloodLust2222 Curious as to how Democrat run States are going to handle this. They want/need the tax revenues, However, Most are shutting down coal and nuclear power plants which are the only way to sustain such power needs for data centers. I don't think wind mills and solar farms are going to cut it. Reply
jkflipflop98 So take the money and upgrade the infrastructure of your country. Duh. This is a win/win. The company gets it's data center and Kenya gets a modernized power grid. I'm not seeing the problem here. Reply
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