Further Reading
The curated list, not the algorithm.
Everything we think is actually worth your reading/listening time. Hand-picked. No affiliate links. Updated when someone does better work.
Analyst / Must-Read
The handful of analysts moving the actual conversation. Read these before anything else.
SemiAnalysis (Dylan Patel)
MixedAnalyst
Deep hardware + business analysis. Free posts are substantial; paid gets exclusive data. The most influential voice in AI infra.
The Next Platform (Timothy Prickett Morgan)
FreeAnalyst
Decades of HPC analysis. Strongest long-form coverage of NVL72, TPUs, custom silicon.
Data Center Frontier
FreeBlog
Daily news with AI emphasis. Covers every new site announcement + power deal.
Data Center Dynamics (DCD)
FreeBlog
Industry trade press since 2003. Global coverage, rigorous.
ServeTheHome (Patrick Kennedy)
FreeBlog
Hardware deep dives. Photos of actual racks + servers. Best single-GPU benchmarks.
HPCwire
FreeBlog
HPC-adjacent; increasingly AI-focused. Great for exascale, national-lab context.
Newsletters Worth Subscribing To
Substack + email — intentional reading, not algorithmic feed.
Interconnects (Nathan Lambert)
FreeNewsletter
Post-training, RLHF, frontier labs. Tight analysis of what really drives model capabilities.
Latent Space (swyx + Alessio)
FreeNewsletter
Engineer-focused. Podcast too. Good DC/infra episodes.
Import AI (Jack Clark)
FreeNewsletter
Anthropic co-founder. Weekly research + policy digest.
One Useful Thing (Ethan Mollick)
FreeNewsletter
Not infra-focused but the best macro context for WHY this all matters.
Podcasts
For commuting + gym time.
Acquired — CoreWeave episode
FreePodcast
Best-researched narrative of the neocloud business model.
Dwarkesh Podcast
FreePodcast
Long-form interviews with frontier AI + infra leaders. Demis Hassabis, Satya Nadella, Dario Amodei.
Data Center Dynamics podcast
FreePodcast
Industry-insider interviews; operators + vendors discussing build specifics.
Cognitive Revolution
FreePodcast
Nathan Labenz. Deep infra episodes. Good bullshit detector.
Primary Sources (go read the specs)
When analysts contradict each other, go to the source.
NVIDIA datasheets (H100/H200/B200/GB200)
FreePrimary Source
Official spec sheets. Every memory bandwidth + TDP + FLOPS number starts here.
Open Compute Project specifications
FreePrimary Source
What hyperscalers actually deploy. Reading OCP specs is how you know what Meta/Microsoft/Google do differently.
Uptime Institute Tier Standard
Free (summary)Primary Source
The definitive definition of Tier I-IV. Don't let anyone redefine the terms.
ASHRAE TC 9.9 thermal guidelines
Paid (~$100)Primary Source
Defines the thermal envelopes (A1-A4, W1-W5) that every modern DC designs to.
FERC interconnection queue data
FreePrimary Source
Where you see, in advance, whether a region can actually support a new 500 MW load.
Conferences & Events
Where the DC operators physically meet. Most have free online content.
OCP Global Summit
Paid in person / Free videosConference
Annual. Where Meta, Microsoft, Google share what they built. All talks posted free.
7×24 Exchange International
PaidConference
Spring + Fall conferences. THE US mission-critical networking event.
Data Center World
PaidConference
AFCOM's event. Broader than AI, good for facilities pros.
DCD > Connect
PaidConference
Global series (London, NY, Singapore, Paris). Industry + policy + customers.
NVIDIA GTC
Free (virtual)Conference
The silicon roadmap speaks here. Jensen's keynote = news + product strategy.
Community
Where practitioners actually talk.
r/datacenter
FreeCommunity
Weekly incidents, career questions, vendor gossip. Less academic, more real-world.
r/HomeDataCenter
FreeCommunity
Enthusiasts building 1-4 rack clusters at home. Good for hands-on learning.
HackerNews — search 'data center'
FreeCommunity
Where every announcement gets torn apart in comments within an hour.
LinkedIn 'AI Infrastructure' groups
FreeCommunity
Where the practitioners you want to hire are. Also where recruiters find them.
Books
The slow-media path. None are about AI specifically but all have load-bearing ideas.
The Cold Start Problem (Andrew Chen)
PaidBook
Platform economics. Useful mental model for understanding cloud + neocloud dynamics.
Super Pumped (Mike Isaac)
PaidBook
Uber story, but the 'blitz-scale then deal with consequences' playbook is EXACTLY what xAI did in Memphis.
The Power Broker (Robert Caro)
PaidBook
1974 book on Robert Moses. Deep template for how infrastructure politics work. Every DC permitting fight echoes this.
Chip War (Chris Miller)
PaidBook
How the semiconductor industry became geopolitical. Essential context for Trainium/TPU/NVIDIA dynamics.
We read these weekly
If you only read 3: The Next Platform, SemiAnalysis free posts, and ServeTheHome. That combo gives you hardware, analysis, and photos of what's actually being deployed.