Intelligent Computing Power

IDC projects global data center cabinets will grow from roughly 25 million in 2026 to 58 million by 2030, with annual energy consumption rising from 519 TWh to 1,308 TWh and facility capex climbing from $276 billion to $655 billion. The report flags power supply, grid interconnection and liquid-cooling delivery cycles as key constraints on AI infrastructure buildout, while China's intelligent compute capacity reached 2,185 EFLOPS with only a 71.4% rack utilization rate, pointing to regional supply-demand mismatches.

At its Xiamen standards week, China's national data standardization committee reported that the country's total computing power has reached 3.1 million PFLOPS, second only to the United States, and launched drafting groups for embodied-AI data standards plus four sector-specific application standards. Earlier figures from the National Data Administration put intelligent computing at 1.59 million PFLOPS by end-2025, also second globally, with annual growth of roughly 30%.