Artificial intelligence may not be running out of ideas, but it may be approaching the practical limits of electrons. As communication becomes increasingly expensive, the future of computing may depend less on processing information and more on moving it efficiently.
As artificial intelligence pushes computation towards new physical limits, the future of digital infrastructure may depend less on moving electrons and increasingly on guiding light.
Artificial intelligence is no longer scaling like software. As compute demand explodes, the real bottleneck is shifting toward electricity, grids, and physical infrastructure. The AI economy is becoming increasingly industrial — governed not only by algorithms, but by energy availability itself.
As AI systems scale, the real constraint is no longer compute but connectivity. At OFC 2026, photonics—and specifically chip packaging—emerges as the critical layer enabling performance, efficiency and scalability, positioning the Netherlands as a strategic player in global AI infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services has become more than a cloud provider; it is an invisible layer of global infrastructure that quietly determines where digital economies can grow. Nowhere is this more visible than in the geography of its datacenters. Dublin, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Singapore and Northern Virginia are not just strategic locations; they are geopolitical anchors in a world where data borders matter as much as physical ones. Each region has evolved into a gravitational center for AI companies, research institutions and cloud-native industries, pulling talent and investment toward the places where AWS capacity exists.
Nebius emerged quietly, almost unexpectedly, as one of Europe’s most strategic AI-infrastructure players. Its corporate home in Amsterdam–Schiphol Rijk gives it a European identity, but its operations stretch far beyond Dutch borders. Born from the international restructuring of Yandex in 2024, Nebius now positions itself as an independent global technology group, building cloud systems designed not for traditional enterprise workloads, but for intensive AI training and high-performance computing.
Germany’s AI ambitions are shaped as much by infrastructure as by research, industry or policy. Datacenters, energy supply and high-performance computing form the essential backbone for AI deployment, yet they also introduce constraints that influence where, how and how quickly AI capabilities can scale. Ambition alone cannot overcome the realities of electricity grids, cooling requirements and permitting processes.
