The great rackification
When data centres become the new offices, we need a new kind of city.
Recently, we came across a graph with a clear message: by the end of 2025, spending on building data centres in the US overtook that on office buildings for the first time in history. The need for desks is going down, while the hunger for server racks is endless.
The reason is no mystery: AI. We’re getting used to nervous headlines about waves of layoffs — most recently with Block, which showed a massive chunk of its workforce the door. Expenditure on human capital (desks, coffee machines, meeting rooms) is plummeting, while spending on API tokens and cloud capacity continues to soar. We’re witnessing the rapid rackification of our commercial landscape.
The death of the desk
According to Anthropic, we’re only at the beginning of this shift. Many of the roles under pressure are knowledge-intensive: legal, financial, analytical. Perhaps Anthropic is exaggerating, but the trend is clear.
Data centres are gradually taking over the role of office buildings, just as bots are taking over the tasks of knowledge workers. So, where does that leave our shiny Central Business Districts? Is this necessarily bad news for our cities? Not really.
