Make Me Smart The infrastructure side of the AI boom
10 snips
Jan 23, 2026 
Meghan McCarty Carino, Marketplace Tech reporter who documented AI infrastructure by visiting data centers and projects. She describes different data center types and a finished center waiting for power. She discusses power workarounds like EV battery microgrids and tiny hardware and networking tweaks firms make to scale. She connects the current AI buildout to past infrastructure booms.
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AI Is An Infrastructure Boom
- AI growth depends heavily on physical data-center infrastructure, not just models and chips.
- Meghan McCarty Carino compares this buildout to railroads and fiber optic rollouts as foundational economic change.
Empty Built Data Centers Waiting For Power
- Meghan visited data centers near NVIDIA headquarters and downtown carrier hotels in Silicon Valley.
- She saw an empty large data center that lacked a local utility power hookup and sat idle despite being complete.
Power And Network Are The Real Constraints
- Power and networking are critical bottlenecks for scaling AI services.
- Companies are innovating from repurposed EV batteries to reengineering cable plugs to meet intense deployment demand.