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Azhar says data centers race for power, not price

Azeem Azhar, author of Exponential View, rebuts McKinsey: data centers compete on how fast they can get power, not on the price of power. Azhar's claim that power is a small share of costs is his personal judgment, with no cost figures attached. McKinsey Global Institute posted on October 31: "The electricity bill decides the economics. Same data center: $200/MWh in China, $380 in London." The post doesn't say how those figures were calculated (McKinsey, 2026-10-31). Azhar replied: "This isn't right. Power is such a small portion of the overall operating; financing and depreciation cost of a data center. The thing that matters is time to power." (Azhar, 2026-10-31) How we checked →

Concept illustration in two rows: on top, two white buildings lettered CHINA (left) and LONDON (right) have a short stack of gold coins and a tall stack of gold coins in front of them respectively, with a sign lettered POWER BILL between them, a sign lettered MCKINSEY at right and giant black quotation marks in the top-right corner. Below, a building lettered DATA CENTER with server racks showing sits at left under a black quotation mark, a central pylon sends wires to it and to a dark building at right, and a dark coin stack stands in front of the pylon, while a cable from the left building passes behind the stack and ends in an orange plug just short of a wall socket on the dark building, with a silhouetted figure in a suit at lower right pointing at the socket.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Nov 1, 2026, alongside 7 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "Azhar says data centers race for power, not price." https://secondsource.io/en/expert/2026-11-01-1/. Accessed access date.