  This report characterizes the data center industry and its importance for AI
development. Data centers are industrial facilities that efficiently provide
compute at scale and thus constitute the engine rooms of today's digital
economy. As large-scale AI training and inference become increasingly
computationally expensive, they are dominantly executed from this designated
infrastructure. Key features of data centers include large-scale compute
clusters that require extensive cooling and consume large amounts of power, the
need for fast connectivity both within the data center and to the internet, and
an emphasis on security and reliability. The global industry is valued at
approximately $250B and is expected to double over the next seven years. There
are likely about 500 large (above 10 MW) data centers globally, with the US,
Europe, and China constituting the most important markets. The report further
covers important actors, business models, main inputs, and typical locations of
data centers.
