The data center networking landscape is undergoing rapid transformation driven by generative AI workloads. Major industry players are directing unprecedented investments into AI infrastructure — Microsoft alone plans USD 80B in data center buildouts for 2025.
This massive investment fundamentally reshapes traditional architectures as AI training and inference demands push networks to new performance extremes: 400/800Gbps backend speeds, sophisticated congestion control, and ultra-low latency. However, this expansion faces significant energy generation constraints, with projections indicating a need for 47 GW of incremental power generation capacity in the US through 2030.