Compute meets the grid
AI capacity planning has become an electricity problem. Interconnection queues, transformer lead times and cooling water now determine build schedules more than chip supply does.
The signal
Data centre developers are signing power agreements years before breaking ground, and siting decisions increasingly follow grid capacity rather than customer geography.
Industries involved
Technologies
Liquid Cooling
Moving heat away from servers using liquid — either cold plates attached to chips or full immersion in a dielectric fluid — instead of moving air.
Small Modular Reactors
Nuclear reactors in the roughly 50–300 MW range, built from factory-produced modules rather than assembled entirely on site.
Long-Duration Storage
Storage that discharges for ten hours or more — iron-air, flow batteries, thermal and mechanical systems — as opposed to the four-hour lithium standard.
Companies to watch
Northgrid Data Centres
High-density campuses sited for grid capacity and cool climate.
Reykjavík, Iceland · Founded 2019
Meridian Atomics
Factory-built small modular reactors for industrial sites.
Ottawa, Canada · Founded 2020
Thermafold
Direct-to-chip cooling kits designed for retrofit rather than new builds.
Rotterdam, Netherlands · Founded 2022