“These caches have enormously low latency, and that is one of the key reasons and key engineering choices to support the performance and scalability of enterprise workloads, very data-intensive workloads like databases and transactions,” Jacobi said. “In addition, we have an on-chip data processing unit for IO acceleration and dedicated AI accelerators as well as accelerators for data compression, cryptography and data sorting.” One of the biggest takeaways from this processor announcement is that the enormous catalog of software already built for Arm becomes accessible on a mainframe without anyone having to port it first, notes Matt Kimball, senior datacenter analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in a research note about the news. Still, “this is a 2027 conversation, and with no date, supported software list, or Arm licensing treatment, the work now is inventory and scenario planning rather than financial modeling,” Kimball wrote.

PJM Interconnection has now filed one of the most consequential proposed changes yet in the relationship between data centers and the electric grid. Rather than simply treating a new hyperscale or AI facility like any other customer whose demand will be backed through regional capacity procurement, PJM is proposing a framework under which the largest new loads would need to be supported by new capacity, have their needs covered through the Reliability Backstop Procurement, or face potential curtailment when the regional power system is short of supply. The approach has been developing since PJM launched its Critical Issue Fast Path process for large loads in 2025, but it became substantially more concrete in late July and August 2026. PJM filed its proposed Reliability Backstop Procurement with FERC on July 31 and began accepting applications that day for its FERC-approved Expedited Interconnection Track. On Aug. 13, PJM filed its proposed Interim Resource Adequacy Service, or IRAS, along with the Large Load Registry that would support it. The immediate numbers explain the urgency. PJM’s July 2026 capacity auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year procured 138,318 MW of unforced capacity through the centralized auction. Even after including Fixed Resource Requirement resources, however, PJM came up 6,831 MW short of its reliability requirement. The auction cleared at the FERC-approved $325/MW-day price cap. It was the second consecutive auction in which the PJM region failed to procure its full reliability requirement, something that had not happened before these two auctions. That gap is occurring while demand continues to accelerate. PJM’s 2026 long-term forecast projects summer peak demand growing at an average 3.6% annually over the next decade, compared with just 0.3% in the comparable forecast issued in 2021. Summer peak demand is projected to rise by nearly 66 GW over 10 years. Data centers are

The data center industry’s increasingly power-first approach to site selection has created a follow-on question: Once the megawatts are found, is there enough network infrastructure to make the site useful at AI scale? Zayo and NVIDIA are putting real infrastructure behind that question. Zayo said it is working with NVIDIA to expand network capacity supporting AI factories across North America, including an 8,000-route-mile program targeting some of the fastest-growing AI corridors in the United States. The project encompasses six new long-haul routes along with overbuilds of existing network across 10 high-demand corridors. The announcement arrives as AI data center development moves beyond the largest established hubs toward markets where power and land may be more readily available, but fiber capacity cannot necessarily be taken for granted. That geography is increasingly important. NVIDIA has separately developed “scale-across” networking technology designed to allow AI infrastructure distributed among different buildings — or even data centers separated by hundreds of kilometers — to operate as a more unified computing environment. Put together, the developments suggest that networking is becoming inseparable from the AI factory buildout itself. Power may determine where the next generation of AI infrastructure can be built. Fiber will increasingly determine how effectively those sites can participate in the larger AI ecosystem. Fiber Follows the Power Zayo CEO Steve Smith said AI demand is changing both where network infrastructure is needed and how aggressively capacity must be deployed ahead of development. “AI is fundamentally reshaping where and how network infrastructure needs to be built across the U.S.,” Smith said. The company’s 8,000-mile program is more nuanced than that top-line number might suggest. Zayo disclosed in April that the expansion includes approximately 3,000 route miles across six new long-haul routes, plus more than 5,000 route miles of overbuilds across 10 existing corridors. Zayo

The headline number from Southern Company’s latest earnings report is hard to miss: electricity use by data centers across the utility’s system increased 55% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. But the more consequential numbers may be the ones sitting behind it. Southern now has more than 1.2 GW of operating data center load, up by more than 500 MW from a year ago. At the same time, its electric utilities have signed contracts and large-load agreements totaling more than 17 GW by the mid-2030s, with another 8 GW in late-stage development and a prospective pipeline of large industrial and data center projects exceeding 75 GW. That leaves an enormous gap between the data center megawatts consuming electricity today and the load Southern has contractually positioned itself to serve during the next decade. For the data center industry, that gap may be the most important part of Southern’s second-quarter story. It offers a look at how utilities are beginning to convert the AI infrastructure boom from forecasts and campus announcements into contracts, generation procurement, transmission investment and eventually energized capacity. From Contracts to Megawatts Southern added roughly 6 GW of contracted large load during the quarter alone. Alabama Power signed three projects representing about 3 GW, while Georgia Power reached a 25-year agreement to serve OpenAI’s planned project in Effingham County near Savannah. That facility is expected to require approximately 3.2 GW and begin taking electric service in phases in 2028. The numbers nevertheless require an important distinction. Seventeen gigawatts contracted does not mean 17 GW will suddenly appear on Southern’s grid. Large data center campuses ramp gradually, often over several years, and Southern executives acknowledged that actual customer ramp schedules do not always match the assumptions made when projects are first approved. CEO Chris Womack said

Back on March 31, 2026, we discussed we discussed SoftBank and SB Energy’s plans to redevelop the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site near Piketon as a 10-GW artificial intelligence data center campus supported by almost an equal amount of new power generation. At the time, the plan called for as much as 10 GW of new generation, including 9.2 GW of natural gas capacity, along with approximately $4.2 billion of high-voltage transmission infrastructure developed with AEP Ohio. An initial 800-MW data center phase was targeted for service in 2028. The March story was notable because Pike County appeared to offer a preview of a new model for building hyperscale infrastructure: develop the generation, transmission and data center simultaneously rather than wait for an increasingly congested regional grid to deliver multiple gigawatts of capacity. Not to mention the reuse of a brownfield site with the encouragement of the federal government. Since then, almost every important part of the project has moved forward, and on August 17, the most consequential missing pieces fell into place. NVIDIA announced that it will become the exclusive AI compute infrastructure provider for the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus. OpenAI will be the data center customer, signing a 20-year lease with SB Energy for approximately 8 GW of IT capacity. NVIDIA will invest another $1.5 billion in SB Energy and provide credit support for the land, power and shell infrastructure behind an initial 4.25 GW of IT load, with an option covering approximately another 3.75 GW. The Securities and Exchange Commission filing accompanying the announcement makes the financial commitment even more significant. NVIDIA disclosed that its aggregate payment obligation associated with its initial commitment is capped at $105 billion. That is not a conventional capital commitment to spend $105 billion building the campus, nor is it simply a

Nvidia is scaling back a proposed financial guarantee tied to a massive OpenAI data center project in Ohio, reducing its initial commitment from as much as $250 billion to less than $120 billion, according to report in the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this month, Nvidia announced partnerships with major financial firms including Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR, aimed at mobilizing more than $500 billion in capital for AI computing infrastructure. The change represents a significant restructuring of Nvidia’s role in financing the planned facility, which is being developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank. Under the revised arrangement, Nvidia would guarantee financing for the project’s first phase, representing roughly 5 gigawatts of capacity, or half of the total proposed capacity. Financing for the remaining capacity would be considered separately at a later stage.