Beyond the Blockbuster: Supporting Data Centers as the Real Infrastructure Behind AI’s Comeback
“I’ll be back.”
When Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered that line in 90’s Blockbuster hit, The Terminator, it was pure science fiction. Fast forward to today, and AI is back and it’s bigger, faster, and hopefully far less dystopian. As we witness artificial intelligence moving from the big screen to the real world, the story isn’t just about algorithms that support AI technologies. It’s about the infrastructure powering them, and the surprising role materials might play in this transformation.
According to Goldman Sachs research, global power demand from data centers could rise 165% by 2030, driven by AI workloads that require unprecedented computing, cooling, and efficiency. As Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain and one of the most influential voices in AI, famously said, “AI is the new electricity.”
Just as electricity transformed every industry in the 20th century, AI is reshaping the digital world today, and data centers are its power plants. As AI reshapes industries and accelerates innovation, data centers have become the beating heart of this transformation.
However, the future of data centers isn’t just bigger, it’s smarter, more sustainable, and more complex than ever before. From liquid cooling systems to solar farms, and from predictive AI-driven operations to advanced material solutions like foam, film, and tape, every detail matters in building the next generation of AI-ready facilities.
Data centers have evolved from simple server rooms into hyperscale ecosystems powering cloud computing, streaming, and AI workloads. Today’s facilities are designed for high-density compute environments, flexible orchestration, and predictive capacity management.
The Surge in Demand
Goldman Sachs estimates that global data center power usage may jump from 55 GW today to 84 GW by 2027, with AI workloads growing from 14% to 27% of total demand. Occupancy rates could peak above 95% by late 2026, underscoring the urgency for new capacity and smarter designs. According to the research from Goldman, this surge is fueled by hyperscale cloud providers and corporations training large language models on vast datasets, workloads that require power-intensive processors and advanced cooling systems like liquid immersion and cold plate cooling.
This is a lot like building the backbone for Skynet, the fictional AI system from The Terminator that became self-aware and changed the world forever. Thankfully, today’s AI revolution is focused on innovation, not world domination.
But, the scale of power consumption and infrastructure growth? That part feels straight out of a blockbuster.
If building AI-ready data centers feels like something out of a movie, that’s because the scale is epic. While we might not be fighting Skynet, we are racing against time, resources, and physics to keep up with demand. Here are the real-world challenges standing in the way of progress:
1. Power & Grid Limitations
The grid is struggling to keep pace. In hotspots like Northern Virginia, power interconnection queues can stretch 4–8 years, and transformer lead times exceed 210 weeks. With grid uncertainty, nearly 30% of future facilities plan onsite generation with fuel cells or gas turbines, all of which add cost and complexity.
This is where advanced materials quietly make a difference. Saint-Gobain® Tape Solutions can provide filament-reinforced tapes for oil-filled transformers, engineered to withstand harsh ester dielectric fluids. These tapes are also increasingly being used for their sustainability (bio-based) and performance (high temperature and fire resistant) And, when operators turn to solar, our Norgard® UV Pro Tape 2353 & 2453 can boost panel efficiency by up to 10%, helping offset energy constraints.
2. Cooling & Energy Consumption
Cooling is the energy villain in this blockbuster, consuming up to 50% of total power. Global data center electricity demand could more than double by 2030, driven by AI racks pulling 40–130 kW each. Liquid immersion cooling is the hero, but it’s expensive and complex.
Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions offers Thermal Interface Membrane (TIM) materials to help manage heat and help provide intumescent fire protection for safer, more efficient operations.
3. Water Use & Sustainability
Water-intensive cooling raises alarms in drought-prone regions. And, when sustainability is mission-critical, operators must adopt water-efficient technologies and renewable energy strategies to stay compliant and resilient.
4. Supply Chain Challenges
Semiconductor shortages and transformer delays, sometimes four years or more, are slowing the rollout of critical infrastructure.
Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions can support semiconductor manufacturing with CMP materials for wafer polishing, improving yield and easing supply chain bottlenecks.
5. Environmental & Regulatory Pressures
Data centers already account for ~2% of global GHG emissions and ~3% of electricity consumption, comparable to the airline industry. Regulations like those in the EU now mandate energy and water reporting and require 100% renewable sourcing by 2027.
Our collaborative engineering approach can help operators meet these evolving standards with tailored material solutions.
Building an AI-ready data center means solving for power, cooling, signal integrity, and sustainability, all at once. Foam, film, and tape solutions may not sound futuristic, but they’re essential for sealing, insulating, vibration damping, and thermal management in high-density environments.
Increasingly, silicone sponges and gaskets are part of the AI evolution. As operators explore higher rack densities and immersion cooling, these materials can help manage heat while providing a layer of protection for sensitive components, like for example with chips or connectors that operate under constant thermal stress. Silicone sponges, like Norseal® R10404, offer compressibility and thermal stability that make them compatible with immersion cooling systems, while gaskets can assist with sealing and vibration damping in tight spaces. Beyond thermal management, silicones can also be used in battery energy storage systems (BESS), to help with thermal runaway mitigation and flame propagation control as well as in general construction, contributing to fire-resistant sealing and compartmentation.
Their ability to maintain performance under chemical exposure and repeated compression cycles makes silicones a practical option for designs where uptime and reliability matter.
As the Terminator famously said, “The future is not set.” For data centers, that future may depend on small but powerful details, like silicone solutions quietly enabling the next generation of AI infrastructure.
Many hyperscale operators are investing in on-site solar farms and renewable energy integration to offset skyrocketing energy consumption that is required by these large scale data centers.
Without a doubt, solar energy is a critical piece of the sustainability puzzle, but the challenge is that most panels lose efficiency over time due to environmental exposure, dust, and coating degradation. And, this is exactly where Norgard solar retrofit products come in.
Our newest innovation, Norgard UV Pro Tape 2353 & 2453, is designed to retrofit solar panels and restore lost performance. Applied to the front glass of rigid solar panels, this tape can add 4%–10% efficiency to installations powering data centers. It achieves this through multiple benefits: restoring the anti-reflective coating for a +4% efficiency gain, increasing light transmission for +1%, providing anti-soiling and self-cleaning properties for +6%, and prolonging panel life by reducing temperature through radiative cooling for an additional +0.5% efficiency.
For large-scale solar farms connected to data centers, even a few percentage points of efficiency can translate into significant energy savings over time. Contact Richard Austin (518) 894-5326 for more details ([email protected]).
In short, while AI drives unprecedented energy demand, smart material solutions like Norgard UV Pro Tape help make solar power more reliable and efficient, ensuring data centers stay sustainable as they scale.
AI may be the headline, but the infrastructure behind it, the cooling systems, the energy strategies, and yes, the materials that seal, insulate, and protect, are the foundation of progress. In the details, we find the future.
Data center growth is colliding with resource constraints from power and water to land, labor, and parts. Sustainability regulations and emissions targets add further complexity. Addressing these challenges will require coordinated investment in infrastructure, smarter site planning, advanced cooling technologies, resilient supply chains, and green power adoption.
The explosive growth of AI applications means data centers must be agile, scalable, and sustainable. Emerging technologies like quantum computing will add even more complexity. In this race, innovation isn’t just about servers; it’s about every component, from solar panels to advanced material solutions.
The future of AI-ready data centers will be built on smart design, smarter operations, and the quiet power of materials that make reliability possible. Saint-Gobain Tape Solutions is ready to help build that future — quietly, but powerfully.