Modular Air-Assisted Cooling Targets Existing Data Centers One of the most instructive systems examined during the tour was Cooler Master’s 300 kW Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling (AALC) CDU, a modular liquid-to-air design intended for data centers without an existing facility water distribution system. Rather than transferring server heat into a building’s chilled-water or facility-water loop, the AALC system circulates coolant through the IT equipment and rejects the captured heat through fan-driven radiators. The distinction matters for operators seeking to introduce liquid-cooled AI racks into facilities that were not built with dedicated liquid cooling infrastructure. Although air-assisted systems still require sufficient facility airflow and heat rejection capacity, they offer an alternative to extending a new water distribution network throughout the data hall. The approach is already finding applications in the field. As DCF recently reported, Corvex deployed liquid-cooled NVIDIA Blackwell infrastructure inside an existing air-cooled data center, using Lenovo Neptune technology to avoid a conventional facility-wide liquid cooling conversion. Cooler Master’s 300 kW design separates the pumping equipment from its radiator assemblies. During the tour, a company representative explained that the system can be configured with a central pump rack and either one or two radiator racks, each providing a nominal 150 kW of cooling capacity. This modular arrangement allows cooling capacity to be matched more closely to the installation, rather than requiring every deployment to use the full 300 kW configuration. Serviceability is a major feature of the design. The system uses redundant pumps in a 2+1 arrangement, with two pumps supporting normal operation and a third providing standby capacity. Pump modules are designed for replacement without interrupting cooling operations. Other field-replaceable components include fans, filters, expansion tanks, and power-related assemblies. The product also incorporates redundant filtration and monitoring capabilities intended to help operators identify faults and maintain cooling performance. The

A 1988 Data Center Becomes a 20 MW AI Asset The second presentation, Converting a 1990 Enterprise Data Center to 20MW AI Workloads, featured Coe alongside Ari Chernikoff, vice president of development at Legacy Investing, and Dan Amundson, project manager at Gardner Builders. The project centered on 1001 Third Avenue South in downtown Minneapolis, a financial-services computing facility originally constructed in 1988. The building had supported earlier generations of enterprise computing before portions were converted to commercial office space and smaller colocation operations. Although its remaining operating data center load had declined to approximately 500 kilowatts by the time the AI redevelopment began, the property retained substantial infrastructure inherited from its original mission-critical design. Tall ceilings, robust floor loading, raised access floors, existing medium-voltage substations, and established utility connections made the building an unusually strong candidate for conversion. These characteristics, Chernikoff explained, can determine whether an existing building offers a practical path to high-density computing or proves economically unsuitable for redevelopment. Legacy Investing had identified a market opportunity in what Chernikoff called the industry’s “missing middle”: facilities generally ranging from 20 MW to 80 MW, rather than the 100 MW-plus campuses increasingly associated with hyperscale and frontier AI development. The company viewed existing buildings with available power and favorable infrastructure characteristics as potential shortcuts to deployment, particularly where demand for AI inference and other latency-sensitive workloads favored proximity to major urban markets. Following an AI tenant commitment in summer 2024, the development team faced an aggressive initial requirement: Deliver the first 5 MW of capacity by the end of that year. The first phase was ready for service approximately four months after Gardner’s involvement became formalized, followed by another 5 MW in 2025 and an expansion program ultimately reaching 20 MW over roughly 20 months. All of this had to

Musk predicted that more than 200 neocloud companies could face significant financial distress, predicting that only a small number would survive the coming shakeout. He also said SpaceX would not acquire any of the companies, describing such purchases as “pointless.” The chickens are already coming home to roost on the neoclouds. CoreWeave, Nebius, Applied Digital and TeraWulf have reported quarterly losses over the past year, while IREN has failed to turn a profit in its past three quarters. Shares of CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN have fallen more than 30% during October, according to Reuters. Building AI data centers requires substantial upfront investment in GPUs, networking equipment, power systems, cooling infrastructure and facilities. Operators must then generate enough revenue from leasing computing capacity to cover operating expenses, interest payments and equipment replacement.

The global data center industry is approaching a potentially historic test of its ability to turn artificial intelligence investment into operational infrastructure. In a provocative new forecast, semiconductor and AI infrastructure research firm SemiAnalysis predicts that approximately 51.2 gigawatts of net data center IT capacity will be added globally, excluding China, during 2027. That would represent more than double the 25 GW the firm expects to be added in 2026. Published October 19, the report, Datacenters 2027: The Year of Acceleration, +50GW in a Single Year, makes a forceful argument that much of this unprecedented expansion is already visible in the industry’s construction pipeline. Authored by Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Reyk Knuhtsen and Dylan Patel, the analysis draws on SemiAnalysis’ proprietary tracking of construction starts, individual buildings, hyperscale leasing commitments, equipment procurement and project financing. Its researchers identify more than 60 GW of data center capacity under construction. Among the 40 largest campuses they examined, more than 24 GW is reportedly in advanced stages of development, with much of that capacity expected to be delivered in 2027. The forecast is not entirely composed of projects already under construction, however. SemiAnalysis’ capacity chart includes approximately 11.9 GW of 2027 additions associated with projects still classified as planned. The remainder is associated with facilities already operating or under construction, according to the model’s building-status categories. SemiAnalysis argues that the volume and maturity of projects already underway make a dramatic acceleration increasingly likely, despite well-documented constraints involving electricity, construction labor, equipment and capital. But the prediction has also become the subject of a revealing industry debate, with competing forecasts and new corporate disclosures raising questions about how much infrastructure can actually be delivered on schedule. The disagreement is no longer principally about whether AI infrastructure demand is real. It is about whether the industrial

QuEra Deal Targets On-Premises Quantum Integration Under the expanded collaboration, HPE and QuEra intend to develop integrated testbeds, software interoperability, hybrid algorithms and performance benchmarks to support future quantum deployments alongside HPE Cray supercomputing infrastructure. The work is intended to address the practical requirements of coordinating quantum processors with the classical computing systems that prepare workloads, process results and support quantum error correction. QuEra Chief Commercial Officer Yuval Boger, who previously discussed the development of hybrid quantum-classical infrastructure on the DCF Show, emphasized that integrating quantum hardware into an HPC environment presents different engineering challenges than providing access through the cloud. Boger said, “HPE’s deep experience in supercomputing gives organizations the benefit of working with a partner who can solve that problem at the scale they need.” The collaboration envisions deploying future fault-tolerant quantum hardware at customer facilities rather than requiring organizations to rely exclusively on cloud-based quantum computing services. That option could appeal to national laboratories, defense organizations, pharmaceutical researchers and other institutions managing classified information, proprietary intellectual property or data subject to sovereignty requirements. QuEra’s neutral-atom architecture uses individual atoms as qubits, manipulating them with lasers and electromagnetic controls. Unlike superconducting quantum processors, which generally require dilution refrigerators operating at temperatures measured in millikelvin, neutral-atom systems can operate without extreme cryogenic refrigeration. They still require specialized laser systems, vacuum equipment, precision optics and environmental controls, presenting facility requirements substantially different from those of conventional servers. On-premises quantum-HPC integration is already being tested. In Japan, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) operates QuEra’s 260-physical-qubit Gemini neutral-atom computer as part of its ABCI-Q research platform, which also incorporates an NVIDIA H100-based AI supercomputer. An October 26 case study published by QuEra describes Gemini operating in a separate building approximately 350 meters from the main GPU installation,

DC BLOX: Community Engagement Must Go Beyond Public Relations The afternoon program shifted attention from electrical infrastructure to the growing challenges surrounding data center development and community acceptance. In a discussion moderated by Juli Ierulli, strategic account manager at Environmental Air Systems and vice president of 7×24 Exchange International, Michael Clark, senior vice president of data center construction at DC BLOX, described how the company has revised its approach to engaging communities as it expands into new markets. Clark acknowledged that DC BLOX had encountered significant opposition after entering markets where it lacked the established relationships that had supported earlier developments across the Southeast. “We made multiple stumbles in some of those new markets,” he said, describing how the company sometimes found itself responding to negative publicity rather than presenting a clear explanation of its plans and commitments. The experience led DC BLOX to develop a more systematic approach to community engagement, emphasizing early communication, site-specific websites, accessible explanations of resource consumption and written commitments that residents and officials can evaluate. Clark also pointed to what he called the industry’s “NDA hangover,” reflecting years of development activity conducted under confidentiality agreements that frequently left neighboring communities unaware of what was being planned. But perhaps the most revealing moment came when Clark recounted a conversation with residents near a DC BLOX development in Rockdale County, Georgia. After the company outlined the countywide economic and community benefits expected from the project, one neighbor challenged the distribution of those benefits. “So the rest of the county gets the benefit and we have to pay all the costs,” the resident observed, according to Clark. The question captured a fundamental tension in the industry’s community engagement efforts: tax revenues and economic development benefits may extend across a county, while nearby residents experience the immediate effects