Meeting the silent demand: Retrofitting edge data centers to power the AI era

Meeting the silent demand: Retrofitting edge data centers to power the AI era

Meeting the silent demand: Retrofitting edge data centers to power the AI era

https://www.marsh.com/en/industries/technology/insights/meeting-the-silent-demand.html

Publish Date: 2026-04-20 14:01:00

Source Domain: www.marsh.com

  • Hyperscale data centers continue to gain attention due to their billion-dollar infrastructure investments.
  • Despite the focus on new data centers, retrofitting existing facilities to meet high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) demands is urgent.
  • The global data center ecosystem comprises around 12,000 data centers, many of which are smaller and located at urban or suburban edges.
  • Modernizing these older data centers is crucial for transitioning them to support AI-driven workloads that demand more power, advanced equipment, and complex engineering solutions.
  • The transition towards supporting AI is reshaping the data center environment with “silent demand” from existing facilities.