Data centre chiefs: power and talent, not chips, limit AI buildout
Executives from NTT Data, Brookfield Asset Management and Infosys said at Bloomberg's New Economy Forum in New Delhi that electricity and skilled labour, not chips, now limit how fast AI data centres are built. NTT Data CEO Abhijit Dubey said an electrician in the US earns about $200,000 and equipment can take up to 42 weeks to source, while European grid connections in congested markets run to ten years or more — Amsterdam around a decade and Frankfurt waiting until the 2030s. Denmark's grid operator paused new connections in March with roughly 60GW of projects queued against peak demand near 7GW. Brookfield's Connor Teskey said demand will outstrip supply past the end of the decade and rejected the bubble case, citing long take-or-pay contracts; the IMF's Global Financial Stability Report counted 14 circular deals since 2023, about $300B of equity and $650B of debt backing $1.4T of future revenue promises. Infosys' Salil Parekh flagged a Western backlash, and Scotland's governing party voted to freeze new builds.
Grid access and skilled labour, rather than chip supply, increasingly set the pace of AI capacity expansion — and local political opposition is becoming a further constraint.