European infrastructure companies are building AI data centers on Nvidia's DSX blueprint, Nvidia said on Wednesday at its GTC Berlin conference. The company says the design can cut cooling water use to almost zero.
Nvidia has not named the companies or said how many sites are involved. The announcement came the day after Germany signed an AI partnership with Nvidia at a Berlin investment summit. Nvidia calls these sites AI factories, its term for data centers built to train and run AI models.
Water is a fair thing to lead with. Many data centers shed heat by evaporating water, so a facility's thirst grows with its power draw, and AI hardware draws a lot of power. A blueprint that promises near-zero cooling water goes straight at one of the more common objections to building these sites.
Still, the claim is Nvidia's own, and it covers cooling water at the site. It says nothing in this announcement about water used elsewhere, such as in generating the electricity the site consumes. A blueprint is also a design, not a measured result from a running facility.
The number to watch is the baseline: almost zero compared with what, and measured at which site. Until the European operators publish their own figures, that question stays open.