The AI data center boom just hit a wall that has nothing to do with chips.
Executives from NTT Data, Brookfield and Infosys say the real constraint on building new AI data centers is electricity and skilled labor, not GPU supply. The problem is sharpest in Europe, where grid connections in congested markets can take up to ten years to secure. That wait doesn't come from NIMBYism or missing permits so much as aging infrastructure that was never built for today's power demand.
For two years, the AI story was about who could get enough Nvidia chips. That shortage eased as supply caught up. Power and labor are harder problems: you can't fab more electrons, and grid upgrades move on utility timelines, not venture funding cycles. Expect data center operators to chase sites with existing power access - old factories, former aluminum smelters, places near nuclear plants - rather than wherever land happens to be cheap.
A decade-long wait for a grid hookup is still a long time to bet on a technology that changes every eighteen months.