Power availability has become a gating factor for many data center projects, particularly where developers need larger connections or rapid delivery. Grid constraints can also influence where operators place compute for low-latency AI workloads. “Inference has to live close to people, data and applications, in and around major cities, smaller metros and industrial hubs where there is rarely a spare 50 or 100 megawatts sitting on the grid, and almost never a mature hydrogen ecosystem,” said Bachar. In typical data center design, the facilities are planned around 1 energy source, be it electrical grid, solar and other renewables, or diesel generated. All require different layouts and designs. One design does not fit all power sources. FlexGrid lets the data center use any power source it wants and switch to a new source without requiring a redesign of the facilities.

“When AI pipelines slow down or traffic overloads common infrastructure, business processes slow down, and customer experience degrades,” Kale says. “Since many organizations are using AI to enable their teams to make critical decisions, disruptions caused by AI-related failures will be experienced instantly by both internal teams and external customers.” A single bottleneck can quickly cascade through an organization, Kales says, “reducing the overall value of the broader digital ecosystem.” In 2026, “we will see significant disruption from accelerated appetite for all things AI,” research firm Forrester noted in a late-year predictions post. “Business demands of AI systems, network connectivity, AI for IT operations, the conversational AI-powered service desk, and more are driving substantial changes that tech leaders must enable within their organizations.” And in a 2025 study of about 1,300 networking, operations, cloud, and architecture professionals worldwide, Broadcom noted a “readiness gap” between the desire for AI and network preparedness. While 99% of organizations have cloud strategies and are adopting AI, only 49% say their networks can support the bandwidth and low latency that AI requires, according to Broadcom’s  2026 State of Network Operations report. “AI is shifting Internet traffic from human-paced to machine-paced, and machines generate 100 times more requests with zero off-hours,” says Ed Barrow, CEO of Cloud Capital, an investment management firm focused on acquiring, managing, and operating data centers. “Inference workloads in particular create continuous, high-intensity, globally distributed traffic patterns,” Barrow says. “A single AI feature can trigger millions of additional requests per hour, and those requests are heavier—higher bandwidth, higher concurrency, and GPU-accelerated compute on the other side of the network.”

The sovereignty question Adani framed the investment as a matter of national digital sovereignty, saying it would reserve a significant portion of GPU capacity for Indian AI startups and research institutions. Analysts were not convinced the structure supported the claim. “I believe it is too distant from digital sovereignty if the majority of the projects are being built to serve leading MNC AI hyperscalers,” said Shah. “Equal investments have to happen for public AI infrastructure, and the data of billions of users — from commerce to content to health — must remain sovereign.” Gogia framed the gap in operational terms. “Ownership alone does not define sovereignty,” he said. “The practical determinants are who controls privileged access during incidents, where critical workloads fail over when grids are stressed, and what regulatory oversight mechanisms are contractually enforceable.” Those are questions Adani has not yet answered and the market, analysts say, will be watching for more than just construction progress. But Banerjee said the market would not wait nine years to judge the announcement. “In practice, I think the market will judge this on near-term proof points, grid capacity secured, power contracting in place, and anchor tenants signed, rather than the headline capex or long-dated targets,” he said.

Digging in on campus Arista has been clear about its plans to grow its presence campus networking environments. Last Fall, Ullal said she expects Arista’s campus and WAN business would grow from the current $750 million-$800 million run rate to $1.25 billion, representing a 60% growth opportunity for the company. “We are committed to our aggressive goal of $1.25 billion for ’26 for the cognitive campus and branch. We have also successfully deployed in many routing edge, core spine and peering use cases,” Ullal said. “In Q4 2025, Arista launched our flagship 7800 R4 spine for many routing use cases, including DCI, AI spines with that massive 460 terabits of capacity to meet the demanding needs of multiservice routing, AI workloads and switching use cases. The combined campus and routing adjacencies together contribute approximately 18% of revenue.” Ethernet leads the way “In terms of annual 2025 product lines, our core cloud, AI and data center products built upon our highly differentiated Arista EOS stack is successfully deployed across 10 gig to 800 gigabit Ethernet speeds with 1.6 terabit migration imminent,” Ullal said. “This includes our portfolio of EtherLink AI and our 7000 series platforms for best-in-class performance, power efficiency, high availability, automation, agility for both the front and back-end compute, storage and all of the interconnect zones.” Ullal said she expects Ethernet will get even more of a boost later this year when the multivendor Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking (ESUN) specification is released.  “We have consistently described that today’s configurations are mostly a combination of scale out and scale up were largely based on 800G and smaller ratings. Now that the ESUN specification is well underway, we need a good solid spec. Otherwise, we’ll be shipping proprietary products like some people in the world do today. And so we will tie our

Across many conversations at the start of this year, at PTC and other conferences alike, the word on everyone’s lips seems to be “community.” For the data center industry, that single word now captures a turning point from just a few short years ago: we are no longer a niche, back‑of‑house utility, but a front‑page presence in local politics, school board budgets, and town hall debates. That visibility is forcing a choice in how we tell our story—either accept a permanent NIMBY-reactive framework, or actively build a YIMBY narrative that portrays the real value digital infrastructure brings to the markets and surrounding communities that host it. Speaking regularly with Ilissa Miller, CEO of iMiller Public Relations about this topic, there is work to be done across the ecosystem to build communications. Miller recently reflected: “What we’re seeing in communities isn’t a rejection of digital infrastructure, it’s a rejection of uncertainty driven by anxiety and fear. Most local leaders have never been given a framework to evaluate digital infrastructure developments the way they evaluate roads, water systems, or industrial parks. When there’s no shared planning language, ‘no’ becomes the safest answer.” A Brief History of “No” Community pushback against data centers is no longer episodic; it has become organized, media‑savvy, and politically influential in key markets. In Northern Virginia, resident groups and environmental organizations have mobilized against large‑scale campuses, pressing counties like Loudoun and Prince William to tighten zoning, question incentives, and delay or reshape projects.1 Loudoun County’s move in 2025 to end by‑right approvals for new facilities, requiring public hearings and board votes, marked a watershed moment as the world’s densest data center market signaled that communities now expect more say over where and how these campuses are built. Prince William County’s decision to sharply increase its tax rate on

Each January, the Pacific Telecommunications Council conference serves as a barometer for where digital infrastructure is headed next. And according to Nomad Futurist founders Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence, the message from PTC 2026 was unmistakable: The industry has moved beyond hype. The hard work has begun. In the latest episode of The DCF Show Podcast, part of our ongoing ‘Nomads at the Frontier’ series, Mahmood and Koblence joined Data Center Frontier to unpack the tone shift emerging across the AI and data center ecosystem. Attendance continues to grow year over year. Conversations remain energetic. But the character of those conversations has changed. As Mahmood put it: “The hype that the market started to see is actually resulting a bit more into actions now, and those conversations are resulting into some good progress.” The difference from prior years? Less speculation. More execution. From Data Center Cowboys to Real Deployments Koblence offered perhaps the sharpest contrast between PTC conversations in 2024 and those in 2026. Two years ago, many projects felt speculative. Today, developers are arriving with secured power, customers, and construction underway. “If 2024’s PTC was data center cowboys — sites that in someone’s mind could be a data center — this year was: show me the money, show me the power, give me accurate timelines.” In other words, the market is no longer rewarding hypothetical capacity. It is demanding delivered capacity. Operators now speak in terms of deployments already underway, not aspirational campuses still waiting on permits and power commitments. And behind nearly every conversation sits the same gating factor. Power. Power Has Become the Industry’s Defining Constraint Whether discussions centered on AI factories, investment capital, or campus expansion, Mahmood and Koblence noted that every conversation eventually returned to energy availability. “All of those questions are power,” Koblence said.