The AI boom has turned yesterday’s “white space” into tomorrow’s “data fab,” a hyper-efficient production line for tokens and insights. Like chip fabs before them, data centers in the AI era are becoming highly specialized factories where, instead of semiconductor chips, the fabrication plant makes the tokens and insights that drive AI value. Over the next five years, rack power densities will triple, grid bottlenecks will deepen, and speed-to-capacity will decide who captures the surge in AI demand. To thrive, operators must industrialize the last untouched construction frontier: the data hall itself.
The Density Reversal: 80/20 → 20/80
Early cloud builds devoted roughly 80 percent of the floor area to IT gear and just 20 percent to supporting plant. AI and HPC flip that ratio: Mechanical and electrical infrastructure will soon swallow most of a data center’s square footage. What used to be called “white space” will soon be a very small portion of the overall data center. Hyperscale roadmaps already cite 30–60kW as “mainstream” racks, with prototypes from the likes of NVIDIA’s Rubin Ultra exceeding 600kW. The power, cooling, and network systems supporting that level of performance absorb a lot of space.
Liquid cooling solutions are racing to keep pace with the increases in heat density. Analysts like Research Nester forecast a leap from three billion USD in 2022 to 230 billion USD by 2035 (a CAGR above 25 percent) as direct-to-chip and immersion cooling systems become default choices. For executives, the message is stark: Air is out, and liquid is table stakes.
Time-to-Tokens: The New ROI Clock
AI economics live on time-to-tokens, a measure of how fast a GPU cluster starts generating revenue. Yet construction delays plague nine of ten data centers, stretching schedules by 34 percent on average, according to Foresight Works’ co-founder Atif Ansar in a recent interview. Even as far back as 2023, analysts from CBRE and TD Securities have been pointing to power-availability queues of two to seven years across 22 US markets. Meanwhile, the US construction sector must attract 439,000 extra workers in 2025 just to meet baseline demand, according to Associated Builders and Contractors.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Altizer has nearly four decades of experience building some of the world’s most sophisticated government and commercial facilities. In 2002, Altizer founded the Andrew Browning Group (now Compu Dynamics). Prior to that, he served as a senior executive with several nationally ranked general and mechanical contractors.
Throughout his career, he has been a student of and thought leader in the technology and science behind today’s modern building environments. This interest has naturally led to an affinity for clients whose requirements drive them toward facilities that are smart, clean, safe, reliable, and secure. His focus for the last 25 years has been exclusively on data centers ranging in size from 20kW to over 100MW.
Altizer earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Virginia.
