From high-profile layoffs to billion-dollar expansions, strained grids, and innovative cooling strategies, the industry is racing forward while navigating no shortage of pressure points. Let’s unpack the latest data center developments you need to know.
Layoffs Hit Tech Giants
Even as AI sends infrastructure demand soaring, the headcounts at major tech companies continue to decline.
Intel is laying off nearly 2,400 workers in Oregon and another 4,000 across Arizona, California, and Texas. According to The Oregonian, this marks one of the largest layoff events in state history. It comes on the heels of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger admitting the chipmaker has fallen out of the global semiconductor top 10.
Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit also trimmed “hundreds” of jobs just weeks after CEO Andy Jassy pointed to generative AI as a reason to shrink the workforce. Meanwhile, Microsoft recently announced 9,000 new job cuts across teams and geographies – its second major round of layoffs this year.
Billions Pour Into Pennsylvania – and Beyond
Pennsylvania has emerged as ground zero in the next wave of data center expansion.
At the first-ever Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, which was attended by President Trump, companies pledged a staggering $90 billion to boost digital infrastructure and power generation across the state. Leading the charge, Blackstone, QTS, and PPL said they will invest $25 billion in data centers and natural gas facilities in Northeast Pennsylvania, promising 9,000 jobs and a seismic regional transformation.
Google is doubling down with its own $25 billion investment across Pennsylvania and the PJM Interconnection grid region. It also announced a first-of-its-kind 3GW hydro deal with Brookfield to upgrade aging power assets in the region – part energy modernization, part AI acceleration.
Meanwhile, AI cloud darling CoreWeave is building a $6 billion, 300MW data center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for AI workloads.
Then there’s Meta. In a move that makes even Pennsylvania’s billions look modest, Mark Zuckerberg revealed plans to spend “hundreds of billions” to build out multi-gigawatt AI clusters like “Prometheus” and “Hyperion” as part of Meta’s superintelligence strategy.
And in the background? Nvidia just became the first company to hit a $4 trillion valuation, driven by explosive global demand for its GPUs.
Energy and Infrastructure Crunch
Booming demand comes with a cost, and the U.S. power grid is feeling the squeeze.
The PJM Interconnection – the nation’s largest grid operator – is struggling to keep pace with AI data center demand. The operator is warning of outages and surging electricity bills. Internal upheaval like the CEO stepping down and two board members being ousted adds to the uncertainty.
A new Department of Energy report paints an even bleaker picture, warning that blackouts could increase 100-fold by 2030 if fossil fuel plant retirements continue without matching firm power additions. The report prompted an executive order from President Trump curtailing tax credits for renewables – a move that’s drawing fire from clean energy advocates.
Still, some are pushing creative fixes. Intel, Google, Westinghouse, and the DOE are now using AI to streamline nuclear reactor licensing, aiming to accelerate approvals for carbon-free baseload power.
Meanwhile, regulators are catching up. In Ohio, new rules require data centers to pay for 85% of their stated energy needs, regardless of usage, to ensure grid reliability and project accountability.
Add climate to the mix, and the stakes climb higher. The 2025 Global Data Centre Physical Climate Risk and Adaptation Report analyzed over 8,800 facilities and found that by 2050, nearly 20% of data centers could face moderate to high physical climate risks. Flooding, wind damage, and wildfire exposure all pose mounting insurance threats, with premiums projected to triple or quadruple if resilience investments don’t keep pace.
New Campuses, Big Bets – and a Few Setbacks
The site selection race shows no signs of slowing.
Vantage announced a new 224MW campus in Reno, Nevada, with the first two of four buildings already pre-leased. QTS is planning a massive 15-building campus near Madison, Wisconsin, where major hyperscalers are now testing the waters. Starwood Capital is eyeing Delaware for a 1.2GW mega-campus, while EdgeConneX will break ground on a $440M facility in Central Texas this August.
But not everything is full steam ahead. Michigan City, Indiana just rejected an $832 million data center project, underscoring community skepticism and environmental concerns. And one QTS site in Georgia made headlines for the wrong reasons – first due to a hoax bomb threat, then a tragic electrocution accident days later.
Cooling Innovation: From Necessity to Competitive Edge
As AI hardware pushes thermal limits, data center operators are starting to skip off-the-shelf solutions and build their own.
Amazon Web Services has developed a custom “In Row Heat Exchanger” to cool its new Nvidia GB200 deployments. AWS said third-party liquid cooling systems would’ve required rebuilding data centers from scratch – so it designed a retrofit solution that integrates with existing air-cooled infrastructure and avoids multi-year delays.
Meanwhile, Switch rolled out a hybrid liquid-air cooling system engineered for ultra-dense workloads, claiming it can support densities up to 2MW per rack.