Free newsletter: Despite stories about gigawatts of capacity coming online, I've found that the vast majority of announced data centers have yet to be built, with many running far behind schedule. I now believe NVIDIA is warehousing at least a million GPUs. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-al...
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During every bubble there’s one very obvious thing that keeps happening: things are said, these things are repeated, and are then considered fact. The gigawatt-scale explosion of AI compute was one of them, even though it isn't really true. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
Everybody assumes gigawatts of data centers have been built because there's so much construction, but when you look at how long it takes to build a data center, you begin to see a pattern. Most take 18-24 months, and even a 1MW one takes a year. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
The lack of understanding around data center construction has allowed hyperscalers to play fast and loose with the truth, claiming a campus is “finished” when only a few buildings are done, like in Stargate Abilene and Amazon's Project Rainier. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
Microsoft claimed recently that it's brought on 2GW of capacity in the last 6 months, but in an analysis of every announced project since 2023, I've found barely 350MW of operational capacity came online in that time. What's going on? www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
I looked up every Microsoft data center that broke ground since 2023, and across the board they're either incomplete, barely under construction, or still in the planning phases. There's no way Microsoft brought 2GW online in the last 6 months. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
I expanded my search to any data center in America that had broke ground since 2023, and while some were complete, the vast majority were years into construction, or had brought single phases online while claiming the whole thing was complete. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
NVIDIA claims it shipped 3 million Blackwell GPUs in four quarters in October 2025, but based on my analysis, I cannot see how more than a few hundred thousand have been installed. I think millions are sitting in warehouses gathering dust. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
While AI data centers are getting built, my gut instinct tells me that only around a gigawatt at most are actually coming online every year. This is why Anthropic was so desperate that it had to take over Colossus-1 - it had no other options. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
If hyperscalers can't build data centers faster than a few hundred megawatts a year, they've no chance of getting the $748 billion in RPO revenue from Anthropic and OpenAI, and future depreciation charges could climb to $20bn to $30bn a quarter. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
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All of this is fatal to OpenAI and Anthropic, who need compute to grow (and thus, bring in investment capital), and for Oracle, which has bet the farm on delivering compute that it can’t provide, and which OpenAI can’t pay for. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
I need people to realize that the majority of AI data centers are yet to be complete, that those under construction will likely get delayed, and that the "insatiable demand for compute" is a result of little new capacity coming online. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
If data centers aren't getting completed, there's no reason to buy NVIDIA GPUs, no reason to buy Sandisk storage, no reason for SK Hynix's stock to keep running, and no foundation underlying the semiconductor boom. I'm very concerned. www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/