Data Centers: The Hidden Backbone of Our Modern World

In the third episode of The Stepchange Show, Ben Eidelson and Anay Shah of Stepchange Ventures explore the history and evolution of data centers, from the early punch card rooms of IBM to the hyperscale AI factories of today. They discuss the origins of data centers in solving government problems like the U.S. Census, the impact of World War II and the Cold War on computing technology, and the rise of IBM as a computational powerhouse. The conversation covers key innovations like time-sharing, packet switching, and virtualization, as well as the emergence of the internet and the dot-com boom. They also analyze the roles of companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA in shaping the modern data center landscape, addressing topics such as power usage, sustainability, and geopolitical implications, and the impact of AI on data center infrastructure.