5 Notable Data Center Links, March 14, 2026
Hyperscalers Boost Leasing, Cerebras Teams with AWS, NScale Eyes 8GB U.S. Campus
Each week I curate 5 links from the data center sector that I find particularly interesting, with my commentary on why they merit your attention.
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5 Notable Data Center Links
Microsoft, Meta Fuel $700 Billion Boom in Data Center Leases (Bloomberg) - It’s only been a few weeks since the top 4 hyperscalers projected more than $630 billion in CapEx for 2026 to support AI data centers. Now Bloomberg reports that Microsoft and Meta are each committing $50 billion in additional investment for data center leases. Microsoft added nearly 1 gigawatt in its most recent quarter, but is not keeping up with demand, Bloomberg reports. “A lack of server farm space has become a major concern for company executives and investors,” the story notes. (For non-subscribers, DCD has a recap).
Cerebras and AWS Aim to Speed AI Inference in the Cloud - Amazon Web Services is deploying AI chips from Cerebras Systems in AWS data centers, the companies said Friday. The CS-3 systems, available via AWS Bedrock, will offer leading open-source LLMs and Amazon’s Nova model. You can expect to hear more about inference in coming weeks, and this has been a key focus for Cerebras in building a beachhead in high-performance computing. “Inference is where AI delivers real value to customers, but speed remains a critical bottleneck for demanding workloads like real-time coding assistance and interactive applications,” said David Brown, Vice President, Compute & ML Services, AWS.
NScale in Talks to Acquire 8 GW Campus in West Virginia (DCD) - UK-based neocloud Nscale is reportedly in talks to acquire a large site in West Virginia with potential for up to 8GW of data center capacity. The property is said to be one of the largest available sites for AI data centers in the US and has already cleared the necessary regulatory hurdles, securing power equipment for the first phases of development. The property in Mason County would make a big entry into the U.S. for NScale, which just raised $2 billion to accelerate its growth. The DCD piece is a recap of news initially reported by The Information.
Networking Startup Eridu Emerges From Stealth, Raises $200 Million - A networking startup called Eridu has just dropped out of stealth mode and raised over $200 million in Series A funding to create a very high radix switch system for AI clusters that will flatten networks and therefore drop latency and cut network costs. Here’s a deep dive from The Next Platform.
Can Ocean Tides Power a Data Center? Here’s this week’s offbeat data center story: An underwater data center powered by tidal energy has been proposed off the coast of Maine. DeepGreen Western Passage intends to build “universal docking cradles” on the ocean floor, into which it will be able to plug energy-generating turbines, as well as pods containing AI compute infrastructure.
The initial deployment would contain 170 turbines and 34 data center pods, the application said. Tapping tidal power for data centers is an idea that’s been floating around for a while … I first wrote about it at Data Center Knowledge back in 2009, when two projects sought to tap tidal power along the coast of Scotland. This was shortly after Google filed a patent for offshore data centers with “wave snakes” that generate power from ocean wave action. In today’s power-constrained environment, a lot of out-of-the-box thinking will get a closer look.
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