The AI boom has made data centres increasingly relevant to investors. Hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are investing heavily to expand capacity, while power availability, chip supply and grid infrastructure have emerged as critical constraints on growth. This, alongside constraints such as power supply and limited resources like silicon, has prompted funds to track the broader network of AI infrastructure. Given the fast-growing nature of this space, it is no surprise that investors are turning to alternative data to stay up to speed. In this piece, we cover key KPIs across the data centre lifecycle and how investors are using alternative data to track them.

Data centres are the physical facilities, including server halls, cooling systems and the power infrastructure feeding them, that underpin cloud computing and AI workloads. They have existed long before the AI boom, but due to the computing power necessary for AI workflows, they have become a central part of AI infrastructure. For investors, the key KPIs to track data centre companies like AWS and Equinix span the full build cycle.