Data Center Knowledge

North Carolina has narrowed one of its most valuable data center tax incentives, repealing the state’s sales and use tax exemption on electricity purchases while preserving exemptions for qualifying equipment and other capital investments. The change, enacted when Gov. Josh Stein signed the state’s 2026 budget this week, reflects a policy shift as lawmakers grapple with the rapid growth of AI infrastructure and its impact on electricity demand.

Crusoe is expanding its managed AI platform with serverless fine-tuning and self-service inference deployments, betting that enterprise AI teams increasingly want to customize open-weight models without managing GPU infrastructure. The new capabilities, available through the company's Intelligence Foundry platform, allow customers to fine-tune open-source foundation models, deploy them to managed inference endpoints, or export the resulting model weights for use on other platforms.

As AI data center projects grow larger, developers are discovering that securing megawatts may be only half the battle. Winning community acceptance is becoming just as important.

Supercomputing is having another 'super' year. Record-breaking buildouts – fueled by AI demand and hype – are pushing performance and scale in two very different directions. Two Tracks, Two Metrics The action is unfolding on two tracks. One is publicly funded and measured by the twice-yearly TOP500 list. The other is hyperscaler-funded and measured in gigawatts of capacity.

This quarter, major players including Colt, Stream, and Vantage Data Centers have announced key appointments to support their ambitious expansion plans. Meanwhile, infrastructure vendors and service providers are bolstering their leadership teams to address the increasing complexity of power, sustainability, and edge computing demands. Data Center Operations NTT Data Group has transitioned to a new management structure, appointing Kazuhiko Nakayama as its new President and Chief Executive Officer.

Meta’s first Canadian data center will rise in Sturgeon County, Alberta, marking a more than US$9 billion (roughly C$13 billion) investment in a 1 GW AI campus expected to employ roughly 3,000 construction workers at peak and more than 300 permanent employees once operational. The company also plans to invest approximately $42.3 million in local road and water infrastructure. On its own, the announcement represents one of the largest AI infrastructure investments disclosed this year.

Organized opposition to US data center development is growing rapidly just as the industry embarks on one of the largest AI infrastructure buildouts in its history, raising new questions about whether community acceptance is becoming another critical factor in where – or if – projects get built. The latest update from DataCenterOpposition.com identifies 430 local groups opposing data center projects in more than 40 states, up from 268 groups in April and roughly 76 at the end of 2025.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected five additional teams to help build what it hopes will become a national quantum research infrastructure, awarding $20 million to projects spanning fault-tolerant computing, quantum networking and next-generation sensing technologies. Each of the projects has potential to help reshape the data center industry by slashing the massive power footprints and network bottlenecks currently capping AI growth.

According to Omdia’s report, Global AI Cloud Stack 2026: Rethinking Cloud in the Agentic AI Era, the different layers of cloud-native architectures have long been moving toward joint scheduling in specific scenarios. At the same time, signs are emerging that traditional single, vertical layered architectures are beginning to break down.

Prince William County has halted another massive Virginia data center proposal, unanimously voting Tuesday against initiating Comprehensive Plan Amendment CPA2026-00012 for the Dulles South Innovation Center.