AI Agents Are Thirsty for Power

Silicon Valley is shifting away from chatbot queries toward a future filled with resource-intensive agentic AI--and it's driving the data center buildout. Welcome back to Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft tackles a topic around this midterm season's biggest issue: data centers. If you've got a question or thought for the column, feel free to shoot Molly an email at [email protected] or reach them securely on Signal at mollytaft.76. "What on earth are they building all of these data centers for?" an exasperated friend asked me recently.