The problem with data centres 🔋
The short version: A Groq CEO's clip flags problems with the data-center boom, but insider critiques rarely mention the power, water, and land bills communities actually pay.
Our Take
Harry Stebbings' 20VC pulled a clip from Groq founder Jonathan Ross on "the problem with data centres," and it's telling that even someone building AI infrastructure for a living is willing to say the buildout has a problem. We don't have the full transcript, but when chip and compute insiders start publicly hedging on the industry's own growth story, that's worth paying attention to — usually it means the economics of power, chips, and siting are getting harder to hand-wave away.
What these industry conversations tend to skip is the local math: who actually pays when a gigawatt-scale campus gets approved in your county. Ratepayers often cover new transmission and generation costs baked into utility rate cases, aquifers get drawn down for cooling, and local governments hand out decades-long tax abatements before residents get a real vote. A CEO worrying about margins and power constraints is a different conversation than a school board worried about its tax base or a farmer worried about the water table.
Insider skepticism is useful context, but it's not a substitute for knowing what's being built near you and on what terms. Check our facility map to see if a project is planned in your area, and if you want to push for real transparency on the deals being signed, our take-action page is a good place to start.
This is GridWatch the USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 20VC with Harry Stebbings, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.