technology

Those delays, it seems, are due to a key bottleneck: electrical components manufactured abroad. Batteries, electrical transformers, and circuit breakers all make up less than 10 percent of the cost to construct one data center, but as Andrew Likens, energy and infrastructure lead at Crusoe’s told Bloomberg, it’s impossible to build new data centers without them.

“If one piece of your supply chain is delayed, then your whole project can’t deliver,” Likens said. “It is a pretty wild puzzle at the moment.”

As demand for those components far outpaces supply in the US, data center firms have had to source those components from manufacturers in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and China. That leads to longer build times as those complicated parts are sewn together with assemblages of other, smaller parts, before being shipped across the ocean, and eventually trucked to the final construction site.

So no, it seems to be about more mundane components. Power generation is another bottleneck—doesn't matter if you build the data center if you can't power it!