The truth about data center water usage

Modern data center water consumption is primarily a design choice tied to cooling-system temperature, not an inherent consequence of AI compute growth.

• Framing the debate: Host Shayle Kann notes a 300MW data center with evaporative cooling uses ~150M gallons/year — three times less than an equivalent combined-cycle power plant, and comparable to 550 acres of irrigated soybeans.
• Density is exploding: Historical racks averaged 9kW; today's NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks hit 220kW, Dell's Doudna supercomputer at Lawrence Berkeley runs ~280kW, and engineers have mapped designs up to 400-500kW per rack.

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