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The AI boom is heralding a new gold rush in the American west

Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters Driving down the interstate through the dry Nevada desert, there are few signs that a vast expanse of new construction is hiding behind the sagebrush-covered hills. But just beyond a massive power plant and transmission towers that march up into the dusty brown mountains lies one of the world’s biggest buildouts of datacenters – miles of new concrete buildings that house millions of computer servers. This business park, called the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, has a sprawling landmass greater than the city of Denver . It is home to the largest datacenter in the US, built by the company Switch, and tech giants like Google and Microsoft have also bought land here and are constructing enormous facilities. A separate Apple datacenter complex is just down the road. A Tesla “gigafactory”, which builds electric vehicle batteries, is a resident too. Continue reading...