Faraday Academy

Short, sharp courses on the forces shaping the AI data center economy — power, cooling, capital, grid policy, and sovereign compute.

Every lesson is open to read. Free during beta.

Courses

Results updated.

Chips & Density101

AI Chips and Compute Density Foundations

with Mach Eigen

The constraint is simple: buildings take years to deliver, and the chips inside them now change every year.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Community Relations101

Community Relations Foundations

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start with the observation that organizes everything else in this course.

30 min readFree during betaNarrated
Facility IT & Operational Technology101

Facility IT & Operational Technology Foundations

with Mach Eigen

Start with a claim, because the whole course hangs from it: a data center is not one machine but two, and they are governed by different logic.

31 min readFree during betaNarrated
Grid & Regulatory101

Grid Access and Regulation Foundations

with Gilbert Faraday

For most of the industry's history, power followed the building.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Insurance & Risk Markets101

Insurance Foundations for AI Infrastructure

with Mach Eigen

Start with the structure of the thing, because the structure explains everything downstream.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
New Entrants101

Neocloud and New Operator Foundations

with Mach Eigen

A neocloud is a bet that four clocks will keep time together: the customer's contract, the chip's working life, the power at the site, and the loan that paid…

25 min readFree during betaNarrated
Networking & Interconnect101

Networking & Interconnect Foundations

with Mach Eigen

Start with a claim and defend it: network architecture is the under-tracked constraint on AI compute delivery.

25 min readFree during betaNarrated
Outage Intelligence & Emergency Response101

Outage Intelligence & Emergency Response Foundations

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a plain observation: complex systems fail, and they fail in ways their designers did not anticipate.

30 min readFree during betaNarrated
People & Signals101

People and Market Signals Foundations

with Gilbert Faraday

In March 2024, Equinix named its next chief executive nearly three months before she started.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Real Estate & Site Selection101

Site Selection Foundations

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with the phrase itself, because it carries more freight than any other in this industry.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sovereign AI & Geopolitics101

Sovereign AI & Geopolitics Foundations

with Mach Eigen

States have always organized themselves around whatever resource their era treats as the master input.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal Policy101

Tax & Fiscal Policy Foundations for AI Infrastructure

with Gilbert Faraday

When people outside the industry picture a data-center siting decision, they picture engineers arguing about megawatts and water.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Workforce & Labor Markets101

Workforce Foundations for AI Infrastructure

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a simple observation that anyone who has managed a large construction program will confirm: the schedule almost never breaks because the money ran…

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
New Entrants201

AI Labs as Infrastructure Buyers

with Mach Eigen

Start with the structural fact: the entities that train frontier models have stopped renting infrastructure and started commissioning it.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Hyperscaler Activity201

Build-vs-Lease & Capacity Geography

with Gilbert Faraday

Every hyperscaler faces the same question for each new increment of capacity: do we build and own the facility, lease a purpose-built shell from a developer…

25 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sovereign AI & Geopolitics201

Chip Export Controls & Outbound Dual-Use

with Mach Eigen

Export controls are one of the oldest instruments of statecraft, but the version that now governs computing is a recent and deliberate invention.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Workforce & Labor Markets201

Construction & Skilled Trades Labor

with Gilbert Faraday

When people picture the buildout behind a new plant, a data center, or a grid upgrade, they tend to see concrete and steel.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal Policy201

Federal Tax Policy — IRA, CHIPS, and Section 174

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a claim that sounds like a metaphor and turns out to be an accounting identity: fiscal policy is the second power grid.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Outage Intelligence & Emergency Response201

Grid Events & Physical Disaster Response

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a fact that annoys people: the electric grid is the largest machine humans have ever built, and it has no meaningful storage.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Networking & Interconnect201

Long-Haul, Dark Fiber & Subsea Systems

with Mach Eigen

Start with a claim and hold it through the whole course: a data center is not a destination, it is a node on a graph.

31 min readFree during betaNarrated
Outage Intelligence & Emergency Response201

Major Outage Postmortems & Pattern Recognition

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start with the thesis that runs through this whole course, because everything else hangs off it: failure is the cheapest intelligence you will ever…

31 min readFree during betaNarrated
Power Architecture201

Nuclear & SMR Offtake for Data Centers

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start with the number that reorganized the whole conversation.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Cyber & Physical Security and Resilience201

OT / ICS / SCADA Cybersecurity

with Mach Eigen

The data center you picture as a hall of servers is, physically, two machines fused together.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Cyber & Physical Security and Resilience201

Physical Security & Access Control

with Mach Eigen

Physical security for a data center is a layered system.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Real Estate & Site Selection201

Primary & Emerging Data-Center Markets

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a single county in Virginia, because everything about how this industry maps itself onto geography starts there.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal Policy201

State & Local Tax Incentives

with Gilbert Faraday

Before you argue about an incentive, learn what is being reduced.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
People & Signals201

Talent Flows & Network Mapping

with Gilbert Faraday

Before a company announces a new campus, it has to staff one.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Community Opposition & Regulatory Risk201

The Opposition Register

with Gilbert Faraday

For most of the last two decades, a siting decision was fundamentally an engineering and economics problem.

25 min readFree during betaNarrated
Grid & Regulatory201

Transmission Buildout & FERC Policy

with Gilbert Faraday

When people ask why a new data center cannot simply "plug in" to a grid that already runs surplus power at 3 a.m., the honest answer starts with a piece of…

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Chips & Density301

Advanced Packaging & Substrate Capacity

with Mach Eigen

Open the lid of a modern AI accelerator and the first surprise is how little of it is the thing everyone talks about.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Networking & Interconnect301

AI Back-End Fabric & Optical Interconnect

with Mach Eigen

Start with the claim the rest of the course defends: a large training cluster is a single machine, and its speed is governed by communication, not computation.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Power Architecture301

Behind-the-Fence Gas & Fuel Cells

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with the arithmetic, because the arithmetic is what makes this course necessary.

30 min readFree during betaNarrated
Insurance & Risk Markets301

Climate & Parametric Risk Products

with Mach Eigen

Every parametric contract rests on three moving parts, and the discipline of the product is to define each so tightly that no adjuster is ever needed.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Outage Intelligence & Emergency Response301

Cyber Incidents Targeting DC Infrastructure

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a distinction that will organize everything else in this course: an accident is random, and an adversary is optimized.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sovereign AI & Geopolitics301

Data Sovereignty & Cross-Border Data Flows

with Mach Eigen

The early internet was engineered to route around obstacles, and its architects treated national borders as exactly that: obstacles.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
People & Signals301

Earnings-Call & Investor-Day Signal Extraction

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start with a claim I can defend with a decade of transcripts: by the time a company issues a press release, the interesting information has usually…

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Facility IT & Operational Technology301

Facility DCIM & Digital Twin

with Mach Eigen

Data Center Infrastructure Management is a category with a precise remit.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
M&A & Capital Markets301

GPU-Backed & Neocloud Financing

with Mach Eigen

The AI build-out runs on a simple constraint: someone has to pay for the chips before the chips earn a dollar.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Real Estate & Site Selection301

International Markets & Site Certification

with Gilbert Faraday

FLAP-D is shorthand for Europe's five primary data-center metros: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal Policy301

International Tax & OECD Pillar Two

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a distinction that sounds pedantic and turns out to organise the whole field.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Real Estate & Site Selection301

Land Pricing & Acquisition of Powered Land

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with how land has been priced for as long as there has been a market for it.

30 min readFree during betaNarrated
Grid & Regulatory301

Large-Load Tariffs & Co-Location Rules

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start with the mechanism, because most confusion about data-center power dissolves once you follow the paperwork.

24 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sovereign AI & Geopolitics301

National Compute Strategies & Sovereign Programs

with Mach Eigen

Start with a deflationary claim: almost no country on Earth possesses sovereign compute in the strict sense.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Community Opposition & Regulatory Risk301

Reputational & Political Risk

with Gilbert Faraday

There is a story operators used to tell themselves, and it went like this: pick the site with the cheapest power and the shortest interconnection queue, wrap…

24 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal Policy301

Tax Incentive Backlash & the Clawback Landscape

with Gilbert Faraday

When a governor stands at a podium beside a corporate logo and names a number — jobs, investment, payroll — you are watching a communications event, not a…

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sustainability301

Water Stewardship & Carbon Accounting

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start by clearing up a confusion that trips up even experienced infrastructure people: a data center's relationship with water is mostly about heat…

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Outage Intelligence & Emergency Response401

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Practice

with Gilbert Faraday

Every recovery conversation eventually reduces to two questions, and the discipline of continuity planning is mostly the discipline of asking them in the…

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Real Estate & Site Selection401

Campus Portfolio Strategy & Site-Selection Mastery

with Gilbert Faraday

Expert site selection begins with an uncomfortable admission: the skills that win a single deal can lose a portfolio.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Community Relations401

Community Strategy Master Class

with Gilbert Faraday

The planning commission is the real interconnection queue.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Networking & Interconnect401

Interconnect Strategy & Investment

with Mach Eigen

The dominant narrative of the AI infrastructure boom has two protagonists: silicon and electricity.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Insurance & Risk Markets401

Lender Insurance Requirements & Risk Transfer

with Mach Eigen

For a decade, the shorthand for siting a large data center ran through two questions: can you get the power, and can you get the water.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Community Opposition & Regulatory Risk401

Opposition Playbook Master Class

with Gilbert Faraday

There was a time, and it was not long ago, when siting a large piece of infrastructure was fundamentally a sourcing exercise.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Cyber & Physical Security and Resilience401

Security Operations & Incident Response

with Mach Eigen

The rule is simple: defend the asset, not the network.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sustainability401

Sustainability Regulation, Heat Recovery & Embodied Carbon

with Gilbert Faraday

The European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, adopted in 2022, is the most consequential piece of sustainability regulation yet written…

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal Policy401

Tax-Driven Deal Structuring

with Gilbert Faraday

Walk a data center and you can inventory almost everything that matters to an engineer.

31 min readFree during betaNarrated
Chips & DensityX

AI Factory Architecture

with Mach Eigen

Stop picturing a data center.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Power ArchitectureX

Behind-the-Meter Strategy

with Mach Eigen

Start with the physical fact.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
People & SignalsX

Executive Signals Before the Deal

with Gilbert Faraday

Let me start with a claim I can defend from the evidence: by the time a merger is announced, the people who will make it work have usually already been chosen.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Power ArchitectureX

From Grid to Rack

with Mach Eigen

Start with the uncomfortable fact.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Chips & DensityX

From Silicon to System

with Mach Eigen

A bare accelerator is a slab of silicon that can multiply matrices very fast and do almost nothing else on its own.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
M&A & Capital MarketsX

How Hyperscalers Reshape M&A

with Mach Eigen

Start with the number that dominates every other number in this market: hyperscaler capital spending.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Insurance & Risk MarketsX

Insurability as the Next Siting Constraint

with Gilbert Faraday

For most of the industry's history, the siting conversation ran in a familiar order.

27 min readFree during betaNarrated
Industry Media & Analyst CoverageX

Reading the Industry

with Gilbert Faraday

Every serious operator eventually notices the same thing: the report that landed in your inbox this morning, the one shaping the boardroom conversation this…

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Outage Intelligence & Emergency ResponseX

Reading the Outage

with Gilbert Faraday

Every outage leaves a record.

30 min readFree during betaNarrated
Sovereign AI & GeopoliticsX

Sovereign AI and the Grid

with Mach Eigen

Sovereign AI is sold as a policy achievement.

24 min readFree during betaNarrated
New EntrantsX

Spotting the Next Neocloud

with Mach Eigen

A neocloud is a cloud provider built around a single function: it acquires the newest AI accelerators in volume, installs them in high-density data centers…

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
ConstructionX

The Factory Floor

with Mach Eigen

Start with the taxonomy, because the market is illegible without it.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Tax, Incentives & Fiscal PolicyX

The Fiscal Grid

with Gilbert Faraday

Every operator learns to read the physical map early.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
M&A & Capital MarketsX

The Takeout Premium

with Mach Eigen

Start with the exit and work backwards.

26 min readFree during betaNarrated
Power ArchitectureX

The Thermal-Power Convergence

with Gilbert Faraday

For most of the data center era, power and cooling were designed by different teams who met only at the loading dock.

29 min readFree during betaNarrated
Cyber & Physical Security and ResilienceX

The Threat Surface

with Mach Eigen

Start with the physical truth.

28 min readFree during betaNarrated
Cooling & Water TechnologyX

Water and Watts

with Gilbert Faraday

Start with a fact that surprises newcomers: a large hyperscale campus can evaporate millions of gallons of water on a hot afternoon, and most of that water…

30 min readFree during betaNarrated