Data center firms say energy and labor, not chips, are holding back AI growth

The AI boom has a new bottleneck, and it isn’t the chips. Executives from major data center operators say the real constraints on expansion are access to energy and the people who know how to wire it all together. Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi, industry leaders ranked power and skilled labor ahead of chip supply and capital availability. The electrician is the new GPU NTT Data CEO Abhijit Dubey pointed to a significant talent shortage, with electricians at the top of the list. He noted that electrician compensation in the US has climbed to approximately $200,000. Dubey also flagged long waits for equipment. Lead times for sourcing gear can stretch to up to 42 weeks. Money, notably, is not the problem. Powering up a data center in the US can cost as much as $3 billion, yet executives did not identify capital as a limiting factor. Demand outruns supply, on paper and in practice Brookfield Asset Management’s Connor Teskey reinforced the view that the imbalance isn’t going away soon. He said demand for data centers will likely exceed supply through the end of this decade. The executives’ comments line up with findings from Bain & Company’s Technology Repo...