Does Living Next to a Data Center Make You Rich?

Salim Ismail takes up Donna Daves's question about how living next to a data center makes you rich when living next to a factory did not, and he is not even sure he buys the premise.

Factories created more near-term opportunities by employing the local workforce and purchasing local services. A billion dollar data center still includes the building work. He is unsure it will purchase as many local services, and unsure the benefits will stay before they get sucked out very quickly. The need for compute is going to be incredible and near infinite, so a neighborhood should want a data center the way it wants electricity nearby in order to thrive. The great economic value is using the intelligence the data center produces to do interesting work, and learning how to leverage what comes out of the building.

Data centers are going to make a lot more money than the factories ever have, with the possibility of a lot more to distribute.