![[PODCAST] Inside a Data Center: Could Edge Be the Answer to the AI Boom?](/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/AI-traffic-1-1000x625.jpg)
AI is driving a new wave of data center construction, and with it, growing concerns over power, land, water and heat. Can we build data centers differently? We put the question to Damien Desanti, founder of Phocea DC, inside his urban data center in the heart of Marseille. Watch our full podcast.
In this episode of Podcasts from the Front, DirectIndustry chief editor and reporter Camille Rustici meets Damien Desanti, a Marseille-born engineer who has chosen the opposite path to the hyperscalers. Where the industry’s giants build 100 MW campuses on the outskirts of cities, Phocea DC develops edge data centers of 1 to 10 MW inside the city: on rehabilitated industrial brownfield sites, soundproofed to remain invisible to neighbors, designed for a PUE of 1.2, and planned from the outset to feed their waste heat into urban heating networks.
Phocea DC is a concrete example, but the conversation goes well beyond one company. How is AI changing the scale of data center infrastructure? Is the criticism of data centers justified? What does it really take to reuse their heat? And as France and Europe open their doors to foreign investment in AI capacity, who will control the infrastructure behind our digital world? An essential discussion for data center operators, technology companies, industrial players and decision-makers.
