SPAN and NVIDIA bring distributed data centers to American homes amid AI infrastructure crunch

Fancy a Data Center in Your Backyard? Start-Up Wants Distributed Data Centers in Homes

SPAN claims consumers can slash their energy and internet bills, by installing a miniature 'distrbuted data center' in their own home. With concerns growing over environmental impacts and soaring electricity use, many Americans are none too keen on having a new data center built in their neighborhood. But what about a data center literally in the backyard? One start-up, SPAN, has partnered with chip giant NVIDIA on a plan to put small data centers inside Americans' homes. SPAN says these "distributed data centers" could work together to produce the same end result as today's large-scale facilities, powering things like AI and cloud gaming. SPAN, which launched in 2018, produces smart electrical panels that can provide granular breakdowns of household energy usage -- for example, how much electricity a refrigerator consumes. The new solution, which it calls XFRA, reportedly uses the built-in intelligence of SPAN's smart electrical panels to tap additional electrical service capacity from the existing grid. The company says it does not expect these mini data centers to replace traditional large-scale facilities, but rather to provide a "low-cost, low-latency solution that can scale quickly" amid record AI demand. SPAN is working with homebuilders like PulteGroup, one of America's largest residential home-construction companies, for the initial rollout of XFRA systems on-site. A SPAN spokesperson told Realtor.com that these mini data centers could also save consumers money. The spokesperson said the company "will take on paying the host's electricity and internet bills directly, and charge a flat fee every month that's much lower than what the host would otherwise pay to their electric utility and internet service provider." However, the spokesperson added that "the exact arrangement will vary from one neighborhood or region to the next." A SPAN spokesperson also told Realtor.com that the rollout has already begun, with the company targeting a 100-home proof of concept alongside PulteGroup and other homebuilder partners. The rollout will initially focus on newly built homes before later piloting retrofits for existing homes and smaller commercial properties.

Americans oppose huge AI data centers in their towns. Tiny ones in their homes may be a different story

Data centers are gobbling up land, driving up electric bills, and becoming a lightning rod for public discontent over big tech's power in society. Maine's legislature recently passed a data center ban in the state (but failed to override the governor's veto). According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 14 states spanning the political spectrum from Oklahoma to New York are considering legislation that would ban or pause new data centers, as public opinion on AI has increasingly shifted to the negative. Still, despite the qualms of the public and politicians, there's a torrent of capital for building new data centers. The biggest technology companies in the U.S. are on pace to spend as much as $1 trillion annually by 2027 on AI, according to recent Wall Street estimates. Globally, a recent McKinsey report forecasts spending on data centers will hit $7 trillion by 2030. At the same time, the idea of putting data centers closer to consumers, even onto and into their homes, is gaining traction in real estate circles. Major players in housing, including homebuilder PulteGroup, are in early testing with Nvidia and California-based startup Span to install small fractional data center "nodes" on the exterior walls of newly built homes, according to recent reporting from CNBC's Diana Olick. The question of whether that model can scale, and whether homeowners, HOAs, and regulators will approve it, is up for debate. Experts point to some benefits to home-based data centers, with the home-based grid allowing for less construction needed on new ones and greater energy efficiency. "It is technically possible and already being explored," said Balaji Tammabattula, chief operating officer at BaRupOn, a U.S.-based energy and technology company currently building out a data center campus in Liberty County, Texas. He said just as a home computer can contribute processing power to a distributed network, a home can host compute hardware that feeds into a larger data processing system.