Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with

For the fourth installment of DCF’s Executive Roundtable for the First Quarter of 2026, we turn to a question that increasingly sits alongside power and capital as a defining constraint. Credibility. As AI-driven data center development accelerates, public scrutiny is rising in parallel. Communities, regulators, and policymakers are taking a closer look at the industry’s footprintin terms of its energy consumption, its land use, and its broader impact on local infrastructure and ratepayers. What was once a relatively low-profile sector has become a visible and, at times, contested presence in regional economies. This shift reflects the sheer scale of the current build cycle. Multi-hundred-megawatt and gigawatt campuses are no longer theoretical in any sense. They are actively being proposed and constructed across key markets. With that scale comes heightened expectations around transparency, accountability, and tangible community benefit. At the same time, the industry faces a more complex regulatory and political landscape. Questions around grid capacity, rate structures, environmental impact, and economic incentives are increasingly being debated in public forums, from state utility commissions to local zoning boards. In this environment, the ability to secure approvals is no longer assured, even in historically favorable markets. The concept of a “social license to operate” has therefore moved to the forefront. Beyond technical execution, developers and operators must now demonstrate that AI infrastructure can be deployed in a way that aligns with community priorities and delivers shared value. In this roundtable, our panel of industry leaders explores what will define that credibility in the years ahead and what the data center industry must do to sustain its momentum in an era of growing public scrutiny.

In honor of this year’s International Data Center Day 2026 (Mar 25), Data Center Frontier presents a forward-looking vision of what the next era of digital infrastructure education—and imagination—could become. As the media partner of 7×24 Exchange, DCF is committed to elevating both the technical rigor and the human story behind the systems that power the AI age. What follows is not reportage, but a plausible future: a narrative exploration of how the next generation might learn to build, operate, and ultimately redefine data centers—from tabletop scale to lunar megacampuses. International Data Center Day, 2030 The Little Grid That Could They called it “Build the Cloud.” Which, to the adults in the room, sounded like branding. To the kids, it sounded literal. On a gymnasium floor somewhere in suburban Ohio (though it could just as easily have been Osaka, or Rotterdam, or Lagos) thirty-two teams of middle school students crouched over sprawling tabletop worlds the size of model train layouts. Only these weren’t towns with plastic trees and HO-scale diners. These were data centers. Tiny ones. Living ones. Or trying to be. Each team had been given the same kit six weeks earlier: modular rack frames no taller than a juice box, fiber spools thin as thread, micro solar arrays, a handful of millimeter-scale wind turbines, and a small fleet of programmable robotic “operators”—wheeled, jointed, blinking with LED status lights. The assignment had been deceptively simple: Design, build, and operate a self-sustaining data center campus. Then make it come alive. Now it was International Data Center Day, 2030, and the judging had begun. The Sound of Small Machines Thinking If you stood at the edge of the gym and closed your eyes, it didn’t sound like a science fair. It sounded like… something else. A low hum of micro-inverters stepping

For the data center industry, the AI era has already rewritten the rules around capital deployment, site selection, and infrastructure scale. But as the build cycle accelerates into the gigawatt range, a deeper constraint is coming into focus; one that sits beneath generation, beneath interconnection queues, and even beneath permitting. It is the physical act of moving power. The challenge is no longer simply how to procure energy, but how to deliver it efficiently from the grid edge to the campus, across buildings, and ultimately into racks that are themselves becoming industrial-scale power consumers. In this emerging reality, traditional copper-based distribution systems are beginning to show signs of strain not just economically, but physically. In the latest episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast, MetOx CEO Bud Vos frames this moment as a structural turning point for the industry, one where superconducting technologies may begin to shift from theoretical to practical. “When you start looking at gigawatt-type campuses,” Vos explains, “you find three fundamental constraints in the power distribution problem: the grid interconnect, the campus distribution, and then delivery inside the data hall.” Each of these layers compounds the difficulty of scaling infrastructure in a copper-based world. More capacity means more cables, more trenching, more materials, and more complexity in an exponential expansion of the physical systems required to support AI workloads. A Different Kind of Conductor High-temperature superconducting (HTS) wire offers a radically different path forward. Developed from research originating at the University of Houston and now manufactured through advanced thin-film processes, HTS replaces bulk conductive material with a highly efficient layered structure capable of carrying dramatically higher current densities. Vos describes the manufacturing approach in familiar terms for a data center audience: “You can think of it as a semiconductor process. We’re creating thin film depositions on

Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with

The race to build AI infrastructure at scale has exposed a deeper constraint than capital or compute: power that can be delivered on predictable timelines. That constraint is now colliding with a system that has historically moved at the pace of decades. But in early March, a key signal emerged that the equation may be starting to change. A Regulatory Breakthrough at the Moment of Peak Power Demand TerraPower’s Natrium reactor cleared a major milestone with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approved a construction permit for Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 in Wyoming, representing the company’s first commercial-scale plant. It is the first reactor construction approval the NRC has granted in nearly a decade, and the first for a commercial non-light-water reactor in more than 40 years. More significantly, it is the first advanced reactor to reach this stage under the modern U.S. licensing framework. For an industry increasingly defined by gigawatt-scale AI campuses and compressed build cycles, that milestone lands with unusual timing. Construction Approved — But Not Yet ‘Power Delivered’ The distinction between construction approval and operational readiness is critical. TerraPower has not received a license to generate electricity. What the NRC has granted is permission to begin nuclear-related construction at the Kemmerer site, following safety and environmental review. Before the plant can operate, TerraPower’s subsidiary, US SFR Owner, must still secure a separate operating license. But in practical terms, this is the moment when a project transitions from concept to execution. It is a regulatory green light not for power generation, but for steel, concrete, and capital deployment. And in the context of advanced nuclear, that step has historically been the hardest to reach. An 18-Month Signal to the Market The speed of that approval may ultimately matter as much as the approval itself. TerraPower submitted its construction