Live From PTC ’26 | Data Center Trends with datacenterHawk

The video is an episode of "Not Your Father's Data Center" hosted by Raymond Hawkins, who is joined by David Liot, CEO and founder of Data Center Hawk, and the company's global leadership team at the PTC conference in Hawaii. Data Center Hawk is a subscription-based platform providing data and analytics on supply, demand, pricing, and trends for over 115 global data center markets on a quarterly basis.

The discussion focuses on the challenges and trends in the global data center business, particularly regarding power and the impact of the AI boom, with a regional breakdown provided by the Data Center Hawk team.

Key Regional Insights on Power and Trends:

• APAC (Asia-Pacific), led by Daddy Escandar:
• Power situations are unevenly distributed.
• Tier one markets like Japan, Singapore, and Australia face similar issues to the US, with power delivery timelines extending to 8–10 years or as fast as 1–2 years.
• Grid quality is also unequal, leading to the use of non-traditional power sources in tier two markets like Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and India.
• A significant project is Google's announced 5-gigawatt data center in India, which requires massive grid upgrades in the Chennai region.
• AI is viewed differently across the region, and many new deployments (45-50%) are being designed as "AI ready," giving the region the luxury of time to prepare before the customers arrive.
• Nuclear energy is not yet popular, though SMR (Small Modular Reactor) technology is being assessed in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia as a fast option for energy where grid quality is poor.

Latin America (LATAM), led by Steve Sass:

• Brazil is the largest market, accounting for 40-45% of the region. It is well-set up for power, with growth spreading from São Paulo and Rio to tier two markets.
• The region benefits from submarine cable capacity and interconnection, which draws development to coastal areas.
• Mexico faces power constraints, specifically transmission issues, in areas like Querétaro, with some large data center companies unable to sell space due to expected power delays of one or two years.
• Transmission is the biggest constraint.
• Private companies may charge high interconnection fees ($800–$1,000 KVA) for connecting to a substation in an industrial park.
• Argentina may see investments due to the discovery of the second-largest natural gas reserve in the south, potentially mirroring the growth in West Texas.
• Most countries in LATAM (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay) have 80-95% renewable energy, primarily from hydro (50-70%).
• LATAM is waiting for the AI "wave" to hit, as connectivity is needed first; Chinese cloud companies are growing capacity rapidly in the region.

North America, led by Ed Soja:

• Power constraints are regional; Texas has exploded with projects in West Texas (Abilene, Amarillo) and South Dallas, due to the adoption of natural gas as a power source.
• Projects are moving to tertiary, non-traditional markets due to power availability, such as P Washington, Wisconsin, and Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
• Large-scale gigawatt developments are still occurring, but there's a return to 20–50 megawatt deployments following a hub-and-spoke model.
• Natural gas is currently used in the US as a "bridging power solution" to get projects running quickly in constrained markets until utility power is available. Its adoption is shaping development locations.
• There is a shift toward nuclear power, with hyperscalers acquiring and talking about building reactors. The host predicts significant nuclear data center projects in the US by 2030.

EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), led by David Saunders:

• The main challenge is finding available land and power in suitable locations.
• Data center operators are partnering with power companies to solve generation, transmission, and distribution challenges.
• Europe has a lot of planned capacity, but the timeline for power delivery is uncertain.
• The planning and regulatory framework is complex, and a shortage of skilled labor is also a factor.
• The legacy FLAP-D markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin) are slowing down, particularly Dublin due to a political moratorium. Emerging markets like Nordic and Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece) are gaining momentum.
• The UK government has dedicated data centers as critical national infrastructure, which could speed up the regulatory process.
• The Irish government recently announced that large energy users can apply to develop gas power plants to support their businesses.
• The Middle East is an emerging market with exceptional growth. Saudi Arabia and UAE are the two major markets, with plans for multi-gigawatt campuses. The region aims to become the AI hub connecting Asia and Europe.

Outlook on the AI Boom:.
David Liot (CEO, Data Center Hawk) predicts a 3-to-5-year window for the current "straight up" AI boom, constrained by supply and alternative energy pathways.

The key factors to track globally are: who has the power, who has the money (for billion-dollar projects), and who has the chips.

• Data Center Hawk tracked 3 gigawatts of absorption in the US in 2023, 6.8 gigawatts in 2024, and 15.6 gigawatts in 2025, which the speaker notes represents roughly $2 trillion in transactional value.
• Other speakers believe the runway is much longer, as large-scale enterprise adoption of AI in sectors like finance and healthcare is still in its infancy.