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AIs explosive growth depends on a backbone of vast energy-hungry, water intensive data centers, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in resources. The challengeand opportunityof the moment is ensuring this infrastructure scales without hollowing out long-term value. Across the U.S., states are racing to attract data center facilities with lucrative incentives. The promise is economic growth and prestige. The reality is more complicated: hidden costs borne by communities, power grids, and ecosystems. As a venture capitalist focused on hardtech and sustainability, I see this tension as both risk and opportunity. The future of AI will belong to those who reconcile scale with sustainability, building infrastructure that powers innovation without draining the very resources societies depend on. THE ECONOMIC CASEAND THE HIDDEN BURDEN Data centers are capital-intensive projects that can inject billions into local economies. Virginias 300 facilities, for example, contribute more than $9 billion annually. Illinois, with over 180 centers, has positioned itself as a hub thanks to land, fiber, and access to the Great Lakes. At the national level, the market was valued at $302 billion in 2023 and is projected to double by 2030. Its easy to see why elected officials welcome them: construction jobs, tax revenue, and the prestige of being a digital gateway. But beneath the headlines, the numbers tell a different story. Subsidies can exceed $800,000 per job. One Alabama project sought $167 million in tax breaks for just 200 positions. Counties quickly become dependent on the revenue, creating pressure to approve more projects regardless of long-term costs. Meanwhile, resource demands are staggering. A single hyperscale facility can consume a gigawatt of power, enough to supply 750,000 homes. Collectively, U.S. data centers used 17 gigawatts in 2022 and are projected to reach 130 GW by 2030, or about 12% of U.S. electricity demand. That growth is already pushing utility prices higher. In Illinois, residential customers saw rates jump 45% in 2025, while businesses faced nearly 30% year-over-year increases. And with federal rollbacks of clean-energy tax credits slowing renewable development, much of that demand will be met by keeping fossil plants online, which undercuts climate goals. Water use adds another layer. Cooling a single large data center can require 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the needs of a town of 50,000. Over five years, U.S. facilities are projected to consume 150 billion gallons, straining freshwater systems that are already under stress. These burdens are not abstract. They reshape household budgets, increase business costs, and raise profound questions about equity. In Newton County, GA, residents face water shortages, rate hikes, and a possible water deficit by 2030 linked to data centers in the area. In Virginia, an African American cemetery dating to 1863 is now surrounded on three sides by data centers. The social and environmental costs are real and growing. THE INVESTORS LENS: OPPORTUNITY IN THE CRISIS None of this is an argument against data centers. They are indispensable to AI, and AI is indispensable to the future of industry, science, and society. But the current trajectory is unsustainable. Thats why investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers should treat this challenge as a growth opportunity. Four areas stand out: Cooling and heat sinks: With cooling consuming more than 40% of electricity, technologies like immersion cooling, direct-to-chip systems, and advanced heat sinks can dramatically reduce energy and water use. Carbon capture and utilization: Data centers can serve as testbeds for capturing emissions at the source and converting them into usable inputs. Long-duration storage: AIs variable load requires resilience. Hydrogen systems, advanced batteries, and other long-duration storage solutions can stabilize grids. Advanced materials and compute efficiency: The frontier is not just bigger GPUs but better architectures, AI-optimized chips, and neuromorphic computing that deliver more performance per watt. These are not speculative bets. They represent areas where margins are high, corporate demand is urgent, and public capital is increasingly aligned with private investment. They are the technologies that will allow AIs infrastructure to scale responsibly. A SMARTER FRAMEWORK FOR GROWTH Reconciling scale with sustainability requires a new playbook. Policymakers, utilities, and investors can align around four principles: Transparency: Require audited disclosure of energy and water use. Conditional incentives: Tie tax breaks to sustainability metrics, not just square footage. Geographic balance: Encourage siting where renewable energy and resilient water supplies are abundant. Community benefits: Ensure subsidies translate into tangible improvements for households, schools, and infrastructure. This isnt about slowing AIs growthits about ensuring it creates lasting value. Done right, data centers can become engines for innovation rather than liabilities. ALIGN SCALE AND SUSTAINABILITY The paradox is clear: AI demands unprecedented computtional scale, but unchecked growth risks raising bills, draining water, and delaying climate progress. The alternative is equally clear: Align incentives, invest in breakthrough technologies, and embed accountability into every deal. The winners of the AI era wont just be those who scale fastest. Theyll be those who scale responsibly and build the infrastructure of a digital future that is as sustainable as it is transformative. Haven Allen is CEO and cofounder of mHUB and managing partner of mHUB Ventures.
Category:
E-Commerce
Lets be real: No one has a perfect business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plan. And thats okay because perfection isnt the goalresilience is. A client once told me they had a mature BCDR plan. Then a hurricane hit. Their primary data center flooded. Admins needed to reach a backup site in another state, but flights were grounded, roads iced over, and their own homes were underwater too. Suddenly, youre asking people to choose between their jobs and their families. Thats not just a logistics problem; its a human one, reminding us that even the best plans can fall apart in practice. But while FEMA estimates that one in four businesses never reopen after a disaster, you can take steps to avoid becoming that statistic. BCDR today isnt just about systems and backups. Its about people, priorities, and preparation. And while no plan is perfect, I still see the same five challenges tripping up organizations. The difference now? The stakes are higher. Cyberattacks can paralyze your entire business. And AI, while promising, isnt a silver bullet. So, lets talk about how to get your BCDR house in order. 1. Identity management: Whos really on call? We used to travel to incident sites, plug in some cables, and run recovery drills. Now, its all remoteopening the door to new threats when your business is most vulnerable. Ive seen attackers sneak into recovery calls using fake identities, with names just one letter off from real employees. Theyll log into calls, listen, disrupt, and make a bad day worse. This is a human vulnerability. Having the right people in place and properly accounted forfrom IT to legalis still critical. Especially when a cyberattack can take down your entire IT infrastructure rather than a single facility. Step to take: Build identity verification into your BCDR runbooks. Dont assume your Teams or Zoom login is enough. 2. Prioritization: Whats your minimum viable company? You cant recover everything at once, so dont try. Nearly half of organizations need more than a week to recover from a cyberattack. In that time, youre not making products, and your stakeholders are losing faith. Ive seen companies try to bring back every system simultaneously. It never works. Focus on what matters most and build from there. Start first with a business impact analysis (BIA) to figure out what keeps the lights on. Thats your minimum viable company and what you need to recover first. Everything else can wait. Step to take: Run a BIA. Use it to define your recovery priorities and align them with your recovery time and point objectives. This helps you understand how quickly you need to be back up and running and how much data you can afford to lose. This is foundational to any serious BCDR strategy. 3. Incomplete recovery: Backups arent a plan Many clients think, Weve got backups, so were good. No, youre not. Backups are just data. If you dont have the configurations and environments to use that data, its useless. Ive seen clients with pristine backups, and no way to run them. Thats not recovery, its a false sense of security. You also need to consider: Systems available to process that data; Where the data is stored because it may be gone; The environment, since moving on-premises data to the cloud is difficult even on a good day. Step to take: Map out your recovery scaffoldingidentity, network, infrastructureand test it. Tools can help automate this, but you need to know what usable recovery looks like for your business. 4. Documentation: Living plans, not dusty binders Ask your team where the BCDR plan is. If they point to a binder, youve got a problem. IT environments change daily, and your plan needs to change with them. That means version control, real-time updates, and integration with your infrastructure workflows, whether in the cloud, a data center, or at the edge. A static document is a liability. Step to take: Treat your BCDR plan like codeversioned, updated, and tested. Use automation where possible, but keep people in the loop. 5. Testing: If you havent tried it, you dont have a plan Because BCDR plans change so often, you need to test them regularly. If you dont, its more theory than plan, and things will invariably go wrong when you need it most. Testing reveals the gaps. Its where you find out if your plan works or cracks under pressure. Think of it like a military exercise. You dont just write the battle plan. You run it. You red-team it. You revise it. Quarterly or semiannually testing is the sweet spot. Any less than that, youre out of date. More than that, youre probably overdoing it or not automating enough. Ask your teams when they last ran a full BCDR test. If its not in the last six months, its time to knock off the rust. The best plans just get more sophisticated along with all the technological advances we implement, and it may be advisable to lean on an outside consultant who can help you troubleshoot without bias. Step to take: Schedule regular tests; quarterly is ideal. Include realistic scenarios, not just happy paths. And bring in your comms, legal, and HR teams. BCDR isnt just an IT exercise. PRESSURE TEST IT NOW At the end of the day, BCDR isnt about checking boxes. Its about protecting people, preserving trust, and proving your business can take a hit and keep going. Ask yourself: If disaster strikes tomorrow, would our plan holdor would it fold? Dont wait to find out. Pressure-test it now, while you still have the luxury of time. Juan Orlandini is CTO of North America at Insight Enterprises.
Category:
E-Commerce
Picture this: You walk into a coffee shop, order a latte, and pay with your phone. To you, it feels like checking out with Venmo. And to the cashier, its business as usual. But behind the scenes, something different is happening: You just paid with crypto. This isnt science fictionits already happening. From Starbucks to Walmart, retailers are rolling out crypto acceptance, and consumers are responding. Surveys show 39% of U.S. crypto holders have shopped with crypto (with 9% doing so daily), while 23% of non-holders say theyd use crypto if they could shop with it. Thats millions of shoppers who want the choice to pay with digital assets, but dont realize that they already can. A smarter way to pay retailers For merchants, crypto isnt just another payment buttonits a way to improve the bottom line. Traditional payment rails come with added fees and delays that can get in the way. But now, crypto processors help convert crypto to fiat currencygovernment-issued currency that is not backed by a physical asset like the U.S. dollar, gold, or silverso merchants can accept crypto at checkout seamlessly. Hows that possible? Its actually quite simple. These processors generate a wallet address for customers to pay (think of it as a crypto account number), then process the transaction, verify it on a blockchain, and automatically convert the crypto to the merchant’s preferred government-backed currency (like the dollar), depositing it directly into the retailers bank account. Conversion is handled immediately, and usually settled automatically at locked-in rates, avoiding any risk of the tokens price fluctuation. And then there are stablecoinsa specific type of digital currency pegged to another asset like the dollar and designed to hold steady valuewhich retailers are also embracing as a way to accept crypto at checkout without having to navigate potential price swings. To sum it up: Often with fewer fees than card networks and instant (or near-instant) settlement, crypto payments can improve cash flow and offer retailers global reach with fewer currency exchange headaches, and money in the bankwithout waiting days for funds to clear. That means less money paid to intermediaries and more money in the sellers pockets. The hidden customer segment Accepting crypto also allows retailers to appeal to a growing, eager customer base. Surveys show that more than 55 million Americans hold crypto today, and theyre looking for practical ways to use it. Offering crypto at checkout signals that your business is forward-thinking and inclusiveand can draw in innovative shoppers who actively seek out merchants who accept digital assets. Big names are leading the charge. Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Chipotle accept crypto through payment processors like Flexa and Spedn. Sheetz enabled Bitcoin and Ethereum across its 750+ convenience stores, even layering payments into its loyalty program. Walmart piloted Bitcoin payments in 50 stores, using the same terminals as Apple Pay. Even PayPal now allows merchants to accept 100+ cryptocurrencies, converting them into dollars on the spot. Everyday value for shoppers For consumers, crypto payments bring tangible benefits that go beyond novelty. The added speed and savings that merchants gain can translate into special discounts and perks for customers, as crypto processors and retailers are experimenting with promotions and loyalty programs that turn everyday purchases into opportunities to earn extra value. In August, Sheetz offered a 50% discount on in-person crypto purchases during peak hours; Starbucks and Shake Shack have piloted Bitcoin rewards and NFT-based loyalty programs; Nike and Sephora have integrated crypto rewards into purchases. With crypto, checkout becomes more than a transactionits a chance to unlock extra benefits. And the checkout experience feels no different. Apps like BitPay, MoonPay, and PayPal work behind the scenes so the experience of paying with crypto feels the same as tapping your phone or swiping a card. From experiment to expectation The story of retail payments is one of constant evolution: checks gave way to plastic, plastic gave way to contactless, and now crypto is quietly stepping into the mix. What once felt novel is becoming normal. For merchants, crypto is a chance to reduce costs, attract new customers, and build loyalty in ways that traditional payment methods cant. For consumers, its a way to shop faster, smarter, and with more rewards. The question isnt if crypto will become part of mainstream retail, its when. And for forward-thinking merchants, the answer is now. Stuart Alderoty is president of the National Cryptocurrency Association.
Category:
E-Commerce
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