Executive Roundtable: AI Infrastructure Under Pressure
At Data Center Frontier, we rely on industry leaders not only to help us understand the most urgent challenges reshaping digital infrastructure, but also to illuminate the broader technological, operational and market forces driving the industry’s evolution.
In the third quarter of 2026, those forces are increasingly converging. Power constraints, unprecedented compute densities and pressure to bring capacity online faster are no longer separate problems. They are interacting across the entire data center infrastructure stack. AI is pushing facilities into operating conditions that would have been exceptional only a few years ago. Higher rack densities are concentrating risk. Scarce power is changing decisions about architecture and redundancy. Accelerated deployment schedules are putting greater pressure on integration, commissioning and supply chains.
At the same time, increasingly interconnected electrical, thermal, storage and control systems mean that resilience can no longer be considered solely at the level of an individual component. The result is a moment when some of the industry’s most durable assumptions deserve another look.
For our Q3 Executive Roundtable, Data Center Frontier asks industry leaders what AI-scale infrastructure is revealing about traditional data center design, where the boundaries of critical infrastructure are expanding, and how operators can pursue speed without sacrificing the rigor required for reliability. As AI infrastructure moves from exceptional deployment to an increasingly important part of the industry’s baseline, the question is no longer simply how much capacity can be built, but whether the underlying infrastructure can evolve fast enough to support it reliably.
Our distinguished Executive Roundtable panelists for Q3 of 2026 include:
- Chrissy Olsen, Vice President of Critical Power Solutions, MPI Energy
- David Shepard, Global Head of Data Center Business, Chemelex-Raychem
- Pierre-Adrien Bel, Product Manager, EMEA, Rehlko
Today, we’ll explore What AI Is Exposing: As rack densities rise and infrastructure is pushed harder, AI is bringing long-standing design assumptions into sharper focus. Practices that proved sufficient in lower-density environments may offer less margin at AI scale, forcing operators and designers to reexamine where redundancy is truly needed, how much failure tolerance remains, and which once-secondary infrastructure considerations now deserve to be treated as critical.
In coming days, we’ll also explore:
- Redefining Critical Infrastructure: How rising density, tighter power constraints and increasingly interconnected systems are expanding what operators must treat as mission-critical — and why the handoffs between power, storage, cooling and controls may deserve as much attention as the systems themselves.
- Speed Without Compromise: How the push for faster deployment is changing the balance between speed and rigor, including where schedules can be compressed safely and where commissioning, testing and operational visibility need to become even more exacting.
And now, onto our first Executive Roundtable question for Q3 of 2026.
Data Center Frontier: What is AI infrastructure exposing that the data center industry could get away with overlooking at lower densities — and which traditional design or redundancy assumptions now need to be reconsidered?
Chrissy Olsen, MPI Energy: AI is showing us where we have relied too heavily on extra capacity and traditional ways of thinking.
At lower densities, individual systems could be designed and managed somewhat separately. That does not work as well at AI scale, where power, cooling and backup systems are much more dependent on one another.
We also have to look beyond simply adding more redundancy. Having backup equipment is important, but real resilience comes from knowing that all of those systems will work together when something goes wrong.
The question is no longer just, “Do we have enough backup?” It is, “Can we respond, recover and keep the most critical workloads operating?”
David Shepard, Chemelex-Raychem: The deployment and rapid adoption of AI infrastructure is beginning to expose a few areas of risk that were previously not top of mind with operators.
Holding aside the “new normal” of extended supply chain issues, deploying IT infrastructure that is, say, 10 times more dense and 10 times more expensive puts a lot of pressure on operators to mitigate this new level of risk and protect these now far more expensive assets.
As a for instance, we do leak detection in the white space. Leak detection SOP 5 years ago was ropes or point sensors on the floor, or under the raised floor.
With AI infrastructures, those individual racks run between $2-7M per rack. That means traditional leak detection is simply not good enough, and “in rack, in CDU, in server” has become necessary.
Pierre-Adrien Bel, Rehlko: AI is exposing that traditional redundancy models can look sufficient on paper while still leaving gaps in dynamic system performance.
Conventional generator systems were designed around relatively stable loads and isolated transient events, with time to stabilize and recover between disturbances. Large AI training clusters change that operating profile because thousands of GPUs may ramp power demand in synchronized, repetitive cycles, significantly reducing or eliminating those recovery windows.
That means installed megawatts and redundancy alone do not fully define resilience. Operators also need to understand voltage stability, frequency control, dynamic response time and available operating margin under sustained stress.
It also challenges the assumption that oversizing or adding more mitigation layers will solve the problem. UPS systems and battery storage can help smooth fast transients, but they do not eliminate the underlying load behavior. Some of that variability still reaches generators, alternators and controls, which makes validated system-level performance increasingly important.
NEXT: Redefining Critical Infrastructure
About the Author
Matt VincentMatt Vincent
Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with his family, remaining an active musician in his spare time.
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