Modular building, cubes instead of server racks, micro-cooling and molecular data storage: these startups are meeting the data centre boom head on.
The recent mega rounds for OpenAI and Anthropic and the trillion-dollar merger between peer xAI and SpaceX have made it clear: the artificial intelligence boom is showing no signs of slowing. But with that vast growth comes an immense need for infrastructure, which is why data centre technology is also surging.
The data centres of the future won’t be the same ones that supported the cloud computing revolution. There are new designs optimised for greater efficiency and performance, together with advanced solutions to cooling the systems and regulating their energy use. And that’s after you’ve found somewhere to build them and connect to the grid.
Here is a new breed of startups with technologies to meet those needs. They are backed by investors such as Intel, Merck, Mitsubishi Electric, Koch together with others from industries as diverse as construction and high-level trading.
