THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW
The data centre industry faces a transformation driven by artificial intelligence workloads that demand fundamentally different approaches to power and cooling infrastructure.
Richard Whitmore, President and CEO of Motivair by Schneider Electric, oversees the delivery of liquid cooling technologies designed for AI, high-performance computing( HPC) and next-generation data centre environments.
Motivair develops cooling solutions focused on scalability, efficiency and sustainability for digital infrastructure operating under increasing thermal loads. With Schneider Electric, the organisation is positioned to help global customers design and operate resilient systems that balance performance, reliability and environmental responsibility.
A new era of AI demand Richard explains that data centre operators working with existing brownfield sites or developing new greenfield facilities must recognise the intensity of power and cooling requirements that differ from previous generations of infrastructure.
“ That shift is being driven by AI, which has been coined the fourth industrial revolution touching every aspect of our lives,” says Richard.“ It’ s advancing rapidly, and newer GPUs leading to rack densification are fundamentally changing the way data centres and AI factories are designed, now and in the future.”
“ Today, data centres need to be designed with the initial intent of supporting largescale, very dense, high-performance computing systems from day one”
Richard Whitmore, President and CEO, Motivair by Schneider Electric
The market trajectory shows AI platforms pulling more than 20 times the power of traditional cloud servers, with roadmaps pointing towards rack densities approaching one megawatt.
This shift elevates infrastructure from a technical consideration to a business decision. The industry previously built data centres to accommodate around 80 % of customers at modest density levels, then created bespoke solutions for the 20 % requiring higher density or high-performance computing. That model no longer applies.
“ Today, data centres need to be designed with the initial intent of supporting large-scale, very dense, high-performance computing systems from day one. They also need to be able to scale at the speed hyperscalers and AI customers are demanding,” Richard says.
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