A data center is a facility packed with servers, networking gear, and storage systems used to run applications and store data. Email, streaming, and cloud storage all run out of one.

An AI data center is a specialized version built for AI workloads. Traditional data centers lean on CPUs for general computing, but AI data centers are built around GPUs and TPUs — chips with thousands of parallel cores that handle the massive matrix math required to train and run AI models. Training a large language model requires thousands of these chips operating simultaneously while pulling from huge datasets.

That computing power creates serious infrastructure demands. The chips generate enormous heat, need high-speed networking to communicate with each other, and consume vast amounts of electricity — making cooling and power supply just as critical as the hardware itself.