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White paper: Navigating AI's Impact on Data Center Infrastructure

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed data center requirements. Organizations implementing AI strategies need infrastructure that can support dramatically different power, density, and scale requirements than traditional workloads demand.

This is the foundation of our new white paper "Navigating AI's Impact on Data Center Infrastructure."

Global technology firms have accelerated AI adoption, and the infrastructure requirements are substantial. As a leading data center developer, CyrusOne works directly with organizations deploying AI at scale. Based on our experience designing and delivering these deployments, the shift is permanent and requires strategic planning across your entire organization. AI is becoming embedded throughout the technology stack—hardware, software, communications, and applications—moving beyond its current role as a cloud-based tool to become foundational infrastructure.

 

Summary

  • AI has fundamentally changed data center requirements, demanding significantly greater scale and power densities (10-20x higher than traditional facilities, with deployments at 120-150 kW per rack becoming standard). This shift is driving intense competition for data center capacity, land, and energy resources across the industry.
  • This represents a permanent evolution in infrastructure planning. Major cloud service providers and technology companies are making significant investments that demonstrate AI's ongoing influence on data center development, with organizations now securing capacity 2+ years out and planning site selections for facilities that won't come online until the 2030s.
  • The supply chain and procurement model has evolved substantially. Equipment lead times for major power and cooling infrastructure now require under 18 months from order to delivery—improved from peak stress periods but still demanding advance planning. Hyperscalers are planning large-scale campuses ranging from 600 MW to 1.2 GW with multiple data centers per site.
  • Success requires organizations to adapt their planning cycles and strengthen stakeholder communication. This includes adopting power-first site selection strategies (expanding beyond traditional Tier 1 markets when latency requirements allow), evolving supplier relationships into true partnerships with integrated planning, pre-leasing capacity before finalizing hardware decisions, and working with experienced partners who can support the specialized cooling, safety, and operational requirements of high-density AI infrastructure.

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