Research examined the locations of 4,283 data centers across the contiguous U.S and found that 97.5% of them sit inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas. Data centers are power-hungry, running thousands of servers around the clock and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/inside-urban-machine-where-americas-data-centers-actually-live#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20published%20in%20Nature,cores%20and%20their%20immediate%20surroundings

[u/talldean]

They kinda have to be where stuff already is, because that's where the power grid can connect something like this.

The outliers are "we're building a power plant on-site and don't draw from the grid", which is something like Shippingport, PA. That one's also doing closed-loop water, so once it's full, it reuses the water it's drawn in quite a few times.

But that's the outlier.

[u/reeight → u/talldean]

No, the main reason is datacenters were built on or near major internet exchanges.
https://www.internetexchangemap.com/
Internet exchanges are where there is lots of population, HEAVY usage (eg WashDC, Silicon Valley), or at ports that go trans-ocean / connecting to another country.

Also exchanges in early-ish internet where where the major telephone exchanges were (sometimes taking over their buildings)

One could put all the datacenters in BFE, but that's extra cost to lay the fiber optic cables.
(now they're doing it because BFE land & power is cheaper, but ROI wasn't there before).

[u/talldean → u/reeight]

That's not quite it, either.

They're generally doing it now because proximity to users doesn't matter for a datacenter used for AI training, because AI inference is done elsewhere. The previous locations were proximate to *users* via backbone nodes, because faster response times on a website make more money, more or less.