'Future-Proofing' Data Centers
Interview with Phill Lawson-Shanks of Aligned Data Centers
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Overview: A modular, adaptability-first design philosophy positions data centers to serve customers through multiple generations of rapidly evolving AI compute requirements, according to Phil Lawson-Shanks, Chief Innovation Officer at Aligned Data Centers.
In an interview with Cool Vector, Lawson-Shanks makes the case that the company’s private equity partners have enabled greater speed and capital flexibility as Aligned grows.
In the interview, Lawson-Shanks also discusses:
Nuclear to the rescue. The nuclear certification timeline — specifically the five-to-ten-year window for small and advanced modular reactor deployment — is the single variable most consequential for the industry’s ability to meet distributed power demand at scale.
The role of the Chief Innovation Officer. The CIO function at Aligned is essentially a continuous intelligence-gathering operation — sitting on industry committees like OCP and Green Build, staying in close contact with chip, server, and hyperscaler companies, and translating those forward-looking signals into building designs that can accommodate workloads that don’t yet fully exist.
Changing data center specs mid-build. When a major client gained access to the latest chip set mid-construction and needed to upgrade data hall capacity from six to nine megawatts, Aligned made that change in flight — without any risk to the delivery schedule — because its modular structural design treats mid-build specification changes as an expected condition rather than an exception.
Future-proofing for chip architecture shifts Aligned designs not just for current chip generations but for the server architectures and physical structures those chips will eventually demand, building in enough adaptability to accommodate clients whose technology is changing whether they are renewing an existing lease, signing a new one, or asking for something that hasn’t been invented yet.
#datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #investing #nuclear #CIO
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‘Future-Proofing’ Data Centers
With Phill Lawson-Shanks, Aligned Data Centers
How do you track innovation across so many different eras and technologies within telecommunications?
Phil Lawson-Shanks: Chief Innovation Officer, Aligned Data Centers.
I’ve always followed where the workload is and what it’s doing, and there’s been a clear transition from mainframe, mini PC, colo — colo was really a function of CapEx, OpEx — then cloud, where again, more CapEx, OpEx. We’ve seen cloud grow exponentially over the last few years, and with that, the locations of cloud. So again, where the workload is being utilized: Edge came out of that, the larger hyperscale sites came out of that. In the most recent years we’ve seen the rise of AI and large language models, and then the utilization of those models.
All of this is a huge trend. There’s a cycle of: use technology, make that more available, then more use based on that availability of technology. There’s this virtuous cycle that just keeps going, and network comes into that. Data centers are obviously at the heart of it — the engines of this and the next industrial revolution. And then how that technology is built, powered, cooled. This is the best time to be alive and in this sector, in this industry.
I spend a lot of time with the chip companies, with the server companies, with the network companies, the hyperscalers, the application layer — whatever that happens to be, AI or otherwise — trying to understand what their requirements are now and what they’re going to be. I sit on lots of committees: OCP, Green Build, and others, where we’re looking at how we can optimize our buildings in the right locations with the lowest carbon footprint, optimized for a workload that, frankly, we’re not quite sure what it is yet.
Designing so that we have true adaptability. AI instances now run on a much shorter cycle, and the requirements of the technology are radically different — the heat loads, the thermal envelopes, the power distribution. I’m constantly looking at how we can continue to optimize our standard delivery and optimize for the future, and allow our customers to grow with us. As their technology needs change, they don’t need to break their lease — they just extend, they change their technology footprint, and we can adapt and deliver on that.
What have been the benefits of private equity entering the data center market?
You need private equity for speed to market, speed of execution. You need large funds that are capable of leaning in, as we have with our equity partners. That’s really enabled us to be so successful. Their ability to lean in allows us to pre-buy long lead-time items, to make acquisition targets — LandBank — which we’ve just transitioned now to building so fast. You need that flexibility of funding.
What market players are driving the pace of change and growth right now?
I think we, as consumers, are driving that right now, because we’re pushing the envelope as to the needs and requirements of not only cloud services. We have mobile connectivity — it’s just a given. We have the most incredible location-based, context-based devices that we carry every day. It would be unusual for anyone to not know exactly where they are on the planet at this point, or what their next appointment is, or the phone number of somebody. And with that comes a slew of cloud services and network services that have to deliver all of that.
Now, as we’re moving into AI agents, that’s changing things again. The context window for doing a prompt is almost infinite — the ability to ask very detailed questions and have your own AI LLM understand you and learn from you, to give you contextual responses based on what it knows about you. This is an entirely different realm of digital infrastructure and digital usage that we’ve never seen before.
We’ve always designed with a liquid loop. We’ve always designed for adaptability and modularity. Even just simple things like the width of the corridors, the height of the doors, the turning radii of the corridors. We’re thinking ahead, anticipating what’s going to happen with the chips, because the chips will then be on a different server architecture, and that architecture will be in a different structure. Trying to future-proof as far as is humanly possible, so that we can accommodate our clients’ needs — whether it’s an existing lease that’s changing technology, a new lease with technology that’s changing in flight, or even something in the future that we haven’t seen yet.
What trend or indicator will we be watching most closely in 2026?
The certification processes for nuclear deployment. There’s a lot of work to enable small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors to be deployed in the next five to ten years. We need that generation of power more locally, more distributed — not only for our industry, but as we re-onshore industry. The demand for power is exceptional. I think it’s a necessity, unless fusion actually comes to the fore — and fusion’s always been ten years away. There’s a lot of work to be done to garner public support. But these facilities don’t have to be in close proximity to urban areas. They can be within regions.
What are the greatest unknowns in the digital infrastructure market?
We’re seeing an incredible technology churn. We’ve gone from air cooling to liquid cooling and air cooling. The way these chips are now created requires a different type of thinking to cool them, which is exactly what we’ve been doing with our modular cooling — the way we design our Delta Flow, Delta Cubes — just understanding the thermodynamics of removing heat. That’s so important, and the ability to do it at such a low cost rate. We see the rapid change from 50 kilowatts per cabinet to 120, 300, 600 kilowatts, a megawatt and beyond. That’s what really gets me excited — the forethought that our engineering team has put together to optimize our build process, our delivery process, and our operational process, to keep our customers’ infrastructure operating at the right parameters.
What makes you bullish about being part of the digital infrastructure industry?
I’ve been working in digital infrastructure — next year it’ll be 40 years. I’ve seen the transition from the mainframe to the AI instance on a wristwatch. This is the most exciting time, where we actually see how technology can change lives for the better. I’m so pleased to be part of this and help bring it to market.
