Bottlenecks, Shortcuts, and Community Investment: Takeaways from Data Center Expo 2026

As data center operators, manufacturers, and policymakers gathered in San Jose this week at TechEx’s Data Center Expo, the consensus was clear: today’s AI revolution will transform every element of daily life. Exhibitors showed off cooling systems, grid management software, and dancing robots (really, a ton of dancing robots), all reliant on one thing: power.

The industry is booming, but even AI can't outrun the laws of physics. Inference requires electrons, and lots of them.

Spark talked to the developers, policymakers, and operators on the floor about what's keeping them up at night. Here’s what we found.

Each month, delays are costing developers millions, many driven by interconnection

We sat down with a leader at one of the country's largest data center developers, and his takeaway was clear: the biggest challenge is power.

Construction can be accelerated. Data centers can be built en masse in factories and shipped to to the site. Crews can be expanded. But power generation and interconnection are bottlenecks no amount of hustle can compress.

These delays matter. Applied Digital’s Brad Barton, SVP of Construction, estimated that each month of delay costs $14,000,000. According to Spark AI’s data, typical interconnections take several years. In Ellendale, ND, where Applied Digital operates a 400 MW data center, interconnection takes 36 to 48 months. In Loudoun County, VA, home to “Data Center Alley”, the process can take up to 60.

The industry is tackling delays on all fronts. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is announcing plans to reform the IX process. Onsite power is becoming increasingly common, as power producers and data center developers work together — or even cross over. And with old-school approaches being revived, including natural gas and nuclear, nothing is off the table.

At one panel, an audience member asked the Delegate of Québec in Los Angeles about her province’s famous hydropower. “Well,” she said with a laugh, “it looks like our abundant energy is less abundant than we anticipated.”

Prefab is no longer a choice; it’s a necessity

In the Dark Ages before AI, developers could afford to build each client their own bespoke data center. Now, as demand far outstrips supply, those same builders are looking to create the Model T of data centers: modularized and buildable at scale.

Data center builders are aiming to construct projects like IKEA furniture: stamped out and shipped across the country for assembly. Prefabrication and modularization have made enormous leaps in the past year, according to Ambroise Lalloz from FirstBlock.

Prefab is the only way to deploy data centers at our rising scale. That efficiency matters for more than just economics. It also feeds the next challenge developers raised: reputation

To stem opposition, operators are opening their wallets

It’s been a long few years for data center advocates. According to Spark AI’s internal data, 46 states contain counties with active or pending data center moratoria. Even counties that are historically favorable to projects, like Wood County, OH or Barber County, KS, have seen protests, petitions, and organized opposition. While tech giants are looking for more places to build, locals are trying to close the door.

Community opposition matters — but it’s not permanent. Several speakers argued that better efficiency is the key to winning communities over. Locals often worry about data centers’ power consumption and carbon emissions, concerns that can be alleviated with technological advances. Through increased efficiency and AI wins for the average person, the tide of opposition can be turned. As Guillaume Lavallee, the Director of Innovation at Ecosystem, said on the panel Building North America’s AI Spine, “We need to think of data centers as equipment for the society and something that brings value, not taking over all the resources as water, energy, and everything else.”

But data center builders can’t wait that long. While engineers are working to build the data centers of the future, company strategists are investing in local communities to build goodwill. Google awards Data Center Community AI Fellowships, funding skills programs near their facilities. Meta has similar Data Center Community Action Grants for organizations including schools, arts cooperatives, and Girl Scout troops alike. Meta’s Claire Inan spoke at the Expo and emphasized the importance of the operator as a community member: “It’s necessary to provide for the local community, so that it’s a co-benefit”, not just a corporate boondoggle.

With these measures, builders and operators hope to reframe data centers as engines of local investments, not noise-makers and polluters, but that future is still a long way off. Earlier this year, one Ohio community saw hundreds of locals storm a town hall to protest Meta’s newest data center project. Read how it happened, and the trends that caused it, here.

Working on data centers, load growth, or energy infrastructure? At Spark, we're building software and agents for this world. Starting with the permitting intelligence that the buildout now demands. We’d love to trade notes.