On Tuesday, data centres faced 47 ballot measures across 10 states and lost 46 of them, with Ohio alone seeing 15 measures to ban, slow, or cap their development. A March Gallup poll found that 71 per cent of Americans oppose building an AI data centre in their area, compared with 53 per cent for a nuclear power plant. While the recent tech sell-off cannot be blamed solely on these measures, the results suggest that local opposition may be a greater constraint on the AI boom than federal action.
Goldman Sachs estimates that short-term moratoriums could affect 45 per cent of planned US data centre expansion. Some investors see a silver lining, as companies with spare computing capacity could see their value rise, and a slowdown in the data centre build-out could ease inflationary pressure on electricity and other inputs. However, the harder question is for chipmakers, who have relied on data centre demand as a sure thing.
Voters have shown that it isn't.
Source: Financial Times Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing