The Top Five Takeaways from Day One of Data Centre LIVE 2026

If the first day of Data Centre LIVE: The London Summit proved anything, it was that the AI data centre race is about much, much more than computing.

Hundreds of industry experts gathered at Exhibition White City on Wednesday to discuss everything from energy infrastructure and geopolitical risk, to grid access and investment strategies.

The atmosphere was electric and the quality of conversation unparalleled. Issues were raised, solutions offered and debates enjoyed.

Most importantly, everyone left West London more enlightened than when they arrived.

Here are Data Centre Magazine’s top five takeaways from the event’s first day.

1. Power availability is now the industry’s biggest constraint

Rolls-Royce Power Systems’ Vittorio Pierangeli opened the summit with a stark assessment of the sector’s biggest challenge.

“Power is the main bottleneck today for the realisation of data centre infrastructure. The typical construction timeframe for data centres is 18 to 24 months,” he said.

The issue, however, is not data centre construction itself. It is the time required to secure access to power infrastructure and grid connectivity.

“We are seeing the lead times to get grid connection in several jurisdictions globally increasing to five to seven years,” he added.

For operators building AI-ready facilities, this fundamentally changes deployment strategy. Energy resilience has now become a strategic business priority.

2. The race for AI infrastructure is going global

Later in the day, the Global Data Centre Strategies panel highlighted how AI demand pushes facilities into giga-scale territory.

During the discussion, ABB’s Giampiero Frisio explained that the industry is rapidly moving from campuses measured in tens of megawatts to sites operating at “hundreds of megawatts, or even gigawatts”.

The panel highlighted that governments are also becoming far more active. 

Mongolia’s Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Communications, Nomin Chinbat, described Mongolia as an emerging investment destination.

She explained its natural cooling capabilities, available land and political stability are advantages for future data centre growth.

3. The energy transition is (predictably) a complicated issue

With the sustainability of data centres under the microscope more than ever, the morning’s panel on the future of the energy transition felt particularly significant.

On the agenda were issues like microgrids, back-up power, PPAs and net zero targets.

One subject that the panellists discussed passionately was the concept of 24/7 carbon-free power matching, which obliges data centre operators to match every kilowatt hour of electricity they consume with the same amount of renewable energy generation.

While this type of matching strategy is regarded as one of the most sustainable ways to run a data centre, Martin Reed of CBRE suggested that the approach is “difficult and uncertain”. 

His firm has managed to achieve a 92-93% level of matching at some sites, but he questioned whether matching 100% of a data centre’s energy was yet viable.

“Are the mechanisms to truly reach 100% there?” he asked the crowd.

Dame Dawn Childs, the Director of Pure Data Centres, argued that now is not the time to let perfectionism get in the way of progress when it comes to goals like this.

“I don’t think the desire to have 24/7 matched power consumption should stop data centre development,” she said.

“AI is part of the challenge,” she continued, “but is also part of the solution.”

4. The 'Jensen Huang effect' is real

During her fireside, Equinix's Petrina Steele dove into the fascinating subject of quantum computing, discussing how it might converge with AI in the data centres of the future.

Speaking with Data Centre Magazine’s Editor Ben Craske, she acknowledged how important Jensen Huang has been to the quantum sector in the past 18 months.

When he expressed his scepticism about quantum computing early last year, the market reacted extremely.

“He wiped around eight billion off the market,” Petrina recalled

But when he publicly changed his mind a few months later, the quantum sector was buoyant again. Petrina calls this the “Jensen Huang effect”.

She encouraged companies and individuals to become more curious when it comes to the potential of quantum.

“If the King of AI, Jensen Huang, is looking at this,” she explained, “then we probably should too.”

5. The data centre sector isn’t great at controlling the narrative

The first day of the London Summit ended in thrilling fashion with The AI Data Centre Debate, which brought together four industry leaders to hash out trends, bust myths and set the data centre world to rights.

The agenda was packed, including subjects like supply chain struggles, net zero, water consumption, modularity and how to satiate AI’s appetite for energy.

Things got particularly interesting when Jean-François Berche of GreenScale began discussing the misconceptions about how much water data centres use.

“A data centre uses less water than 14 golf courses – we don’t talk about this,” he said, arguing that the public perception of a data centre’s resource consumption is overblown.

Jamie Allen of STACK agreed that a data centre’s thirst for water is something of a myth.

“It’s a technical challenge that has long been overcome,” he said, referring to how the majority of data centres now use closed-loop cooling systems, meaning water is recycled again and again.