A new report from Goodbody says we are in the middle of the greatest investment period in the history of Big Tech.<\/p>\n
This year tech giants like Microsoft, Meta and Google’s owner Alphabet are planning to deploy close to $650 billion on AI – most of it on new data centres.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Goodbody’s tech analyst Patrick O’Donnell argued that Ireland needs to compete with other nations over that “unprecedented” capital expenditure.<\/p>\n
This will include the new generation of data centres specifically designed for processing artificial intelligence, compared to traditional facilities used for cloud computing and streaming services.<\/p>\n
“We’re in a very different era now. AI data centers are powering large language models, which process vast amounts of information,” Mr O’Donnell explained, adding that they have much larger energy requirements.<\/p>\n
The analyst believes that Ireland needs to look into “a significant modernisation of the grid network and infrastructure to house modern data centres.”<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen what ByteDance have said in terms of they are choosing Nordics over Ireland, citing capacity advantage and the energy positioning.”<\/p>\n
Data centres accounted for 22% of electricity usage in Ireland in 2024, up from just 5% in 2015.<\/p>\n