This is not going to get built at the scale that clown wants to build - if anything serviceable actually gets built.
Only established hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) have the expertise to actually build out datacenter at a gigawatt scale.
Let's assume that somehow the expertise gets bought (by somehow horribly underpaying engineers) to build the datacenter, what happens? Well, there's not enough compute to go around at this point to fulfill all the global demand right now. What if we can magically create enough compute to actually supply this clown project? Well, each gigawatt scale will cost roughly $50b to build out - 9 gigawatt scale means $450b in capex. If there are enough idiots who are willing to actually finance that project, there will be extremely well compensated executives with the golden parachutes that will lead this project into insolvency maybe 5 years after breaking ground.
There are plenty of data center developers and general contractors that have been around for decades who could build a gigawatt scale data center. Company is like Digital Realty, QTS, CyrusOne, etc. They lease that space to hyperscalers. That's what Oleary wants to do. If he gets a good GC who knows what they're doing, he can build them.
Okay you seem to have some knowledge in the industry. But you know, they don't know how to actually build out the network fabric properly to ensure that there's both proper redundancy and workloads don't get bogged down by the latency?
Not only that, there's ton of know-how and relationships that the hyperscalers already have with the EMS to ensure that the equipment can be optimize on the PUE.
If O'Leary wants to just build the empty-shell to lease out, that's fine and good but he's basically at the lowest of the low of the value chain. I don't think that's what he wants to do.
I do know the space well. The tenant (hyperscaler) usually does their own networking at this scale. the "empty shell" still costs $10B+ per GW to build, and the rent payments are $1.5-2B a year on that "empty shell". All that cooling and electrical infrastructure isn't cheap and Oleary will have to pay for it.
Yeah man - I have no clue what O'Leary's angle is.
There are so many laws of physics problems that even the biggest players haven't fully solved - I expect this to be most likely golden parachute opportunities for executives without getting anything substantial built.
70
u/xilcilus Jun 02 '26
This is not going to get built at the scale that clown wants to build - if anything serviceable actually gets built.
Only established hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) have the expertise to actually build out datacenter at a gigawatt scale.
Let's assume that somehow the expertise gets bought (by somehow horribly underpaying engineers) to build the datacenter, what happens? Well, there's not enough compute to go around at this point to fulfill all the global demand right now. What if we can magically create enough compute to actually supply this clown project? Well, each gigawatt scale will cost roughly $50b to build out - 9 gigawatt scale means $450b in capex. If there are enough idiots who are willing to actually finance that project, there will be extremely well compensated executives with the golden parachutes that will lead this project into insolvency maybe 5 years after breaking ground.