The Data Center Frontier Show

Buddy Rizer, Executive Director of Loudoun County Economic Development, and Lila Jaber, founder of Florida’s Women in Energy Leadership Forum, dive into Florida's exciting rise as a data center hub. They discuss Florida's energy advantages, including excess capacity and proactive utilities, which set it apart from areas like Loudoun County. The duo also highlights Florida’s attractive tax incentives, its strategic location for Latin American connectivity, and how local universities are gearing up to provide top tech talent for future growth.

This podcast explores the rapidly evolving thermal and water challenges facing today’s data centers as AI workloads push rack densities to unprecedented levels. The discussion highlights the risks and opportunities tied to liquid cooling—from pre-commissioning practices and real-time monitoring to system integration and water stewardship. Ecolab’s innovative approaches to thermal management can not only solve operational constraints but also deliver competitive advantage by improving efficiency, reducing resource consumption, and strengthening sustainability commitments.

Join Bill Tierney of The Data Center Construction Alliance, as he discusses some of the emerging challenges facing data center development today. Topics will include how increasing collaboration between OEMs, owners, contractors, and sub-contractors is leading to some exciting and innovative solutions in the design and construction of data centers. He will also share some examples of how collaboration has led to new ideas and methodologies in the field. 

AI networks are driving dramatic changes in data center design, especially around power, cooling, and connectivity. Modern GPU-powered AI data centers require far more energy and generate much more heat than traditional CPU-based setups, pushing cabinets to new power densities and necessitating advanced cooling solutions like liquid direct-to-chip cooling. These environments also demand significantly more fiber cabling to handle increased data flows, with deeper cabinets and complex layouts that make traditional rear-access cabling impractical.

In this DCF Trends-Nomads at the Summit Podcast episode, the hosts from Data Center Frontier and Nomad Futurist sit down with Adrienne Pierce, CEO of New Sun Road, to explore the emerging frontier of sovereign and renewable energy solutions for modular data center deployment. With over 1,500 microgrids under management via the company’s Stellar platform, Pierce brings a field-tested perspective on how flexible, AI-driven energy controls can empower edge and sub-10 MW data center systems—especially in regions where traditional grid infrastructure can’t keep up with AI-era demands. This discussion dives into the real-world opportunities for modular, microgrid-powered data centers to unlock new markets, reduce energy costs, and create more resilient and autonomous compute infrastructure at the edge and beyond. Expect sharp insights into what it means to decouple data center growth from utility bottlenecks—and how the right energy intelligence can accelerate both sustainability and scalability.

In this DCF Trends-Nomads at the Summit Podcast episode, the hosts of Data Center Frontier and Nomad Futurist sit down with UVA Darden MBA candidates Tosin Fashola and Albert Odum for an energizing conversation about next-generation data infrastructure—and why they believe Africa is poised to be its future epicenter. With professional backgrounds spanning data center strategy at KPMG and government-led implementations in Ghana, Tosin and Albert bring fresh, globally-minded perspectives on AI infrastructure, regional power strategy, and the role of connectivity in economic transformation. Expect a wide-ranging dialogue on the untapped potential of African markets, the roadmap to building sovereign cloud capacity and IXPs, and how a new generation of leaders is preparing to close the global digital divide—one hyperscale project at a time.

In this DCF Trends-Nomads at the Summit Podcast episode, Data Center Frontier editors and Nomad Futurist hosts sit down with Greg Stover, Vertiv’s Global Director, Hi-Tech Development. The discussion delves into Stover’s work at the intersection of advanced cooling technologies, hyperscale growth, and AI-driven infrastructure design. Drawing on his experience guiding Vertiv’s strategy for high-density deployments, liquid cooling adoption, and close collaboration with hyperscalers and chipmakers, Stover offers a forward-looking perspective on how evolving compute architectures, thermal management innovations, and market forces are redefining the competitive edge in the data center industry.

In this DCF Trends-Nomads at the Summit Podcast episode, the ever-curious, future-focused podcast hosts from Data Center Frontier and Nomad Futurist reunite with Infrastructure Masons CEO Santiago Suinaga for a timely, in-depth follow-up to his impactful debut on the DCF Show. With AI infrastructure growth hitting warp speed, the conversation will dig deeper into Suinaga’s vision for how the digital infrastructure community can scale responsibly—without losing sight of net zero goals, workforce development, or supply chain accountability. Expect a candid, high-level exchange on emerging regulatory pressures, the embodied carbon challenge, and why flexible cooling and modular design must be table stakes for the AI-powered data center of the future. Suinaga will also share the latest on iMasons' Climate Accord, job-matching platform, and new cross-sector partnerships—all aimed at fostering sustainability, equity, and innovation in an industry racing to keep pace with exponential demand.

In this DCF Trends-Nomads at the Summit Podcast episode, Chris James, CEO of NoesisAI, delivers a sweeping, insight-rich overview of how different classes of AI models—from LLMs and RAG to vision AI and scientific workloads—are driving a new wave of infrastructure decisions across the data center landscape. With a sharp focus on the diverging needs of training vs. inference, James breaks down what it takes to support today’s AI—from GPU-intensive clusters with high-speed interconnects and liquid cooling to inference-optimized, edge-deployed accelerators. He also explores the rapidly shifting hardware ecosystem, including the rise of custom silicon, heterogeneous computing, and where the battle between NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and hyperscaler-designed chips is headed. Whether you're designing for scalability, sustainability, or the bleeding edge, this conversation offers a field guide to the infrastructure behind intelligent computing.

In this DCF Trends-Nomads at the Summit Podcast episode, the Data Center Frontier and Nomad Futurist hosts engage in a dynamic, behind-the-scenes conversation with two of the most influential voices shaping digital infrastructure communications: Illisa Miller, founder of iMiller PR, and Adam Waitkunas, founder of Milldam PR. With decades of experience guiding some of the industry's most prominent brands through launches, crises, and rebranding efforts, Miller and Waitkunas offer an unfiltered look at what it really takes to cut through the noise in a crowded, technically complex market. From telling the right story about AI and sustainability, to building trust across hyperscalers, investors, and public stakeholders, this episode explores the evolving narrative demands of the data center space—and why strategic communications is now mission-critical to business success. Expect honest reflections, practical PR wisdom, and a few war stories from the front lines of digital infrastructure storytelling.