Synthesis: Routing the Map of Where Compute Can Land
Put the pieces together and a single map emerges: compute lands where diverse terrestrial fiber, rich interconnection, and resilient subsea access overlap with power and land. Remove any one and the site degrades from prime to marginal. My read: the winning sites of this cycle are not the cheapest megawatts in the emptiest county, they are the locations where photons and electrons are both abundant and both diverse. The analyst's edge is to score fiber with the same discipline the market already applies to power, because the market is not yet doing it, and the mispricing is still on the table. Power decides whether the building runs; the network decides whether it matters.
Knowledge check
What distinguishes a genuinely prime AI compute site from one that merely has abundant cheap power?
Show the answer
A prime site combines abundant firm power with diverse, independent long-haul fiber, proximity to a rich interconnection point, low-latency routes to target users and partner campuses, and resilient multi-geography subsea access for international workloads. Cheap power alone, without route diversity and interconnection, yields a site that cannot reliably deliver compute and carries stranded-asset risk, because power is buildable with time and capital while network position is largely fixed by geography and must be selected into rather than constructed.