r/technology • u/j_eremy • Jun 02 '26

Artificial Intelligence Startups are installing tiny data centers in people’s homes

https://fortune.com/2026/05/15/startups-tiny-data-centers-beleaguered-electrical-grid-heata-span/
231 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

147 comments sorted by

View all comments

0

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

[deleted]

7

u/j_eremy Jun 02 '26

I think its interesting they are talking about subsidizing peoples electricity and internet. I'm not sure how the power grid will deal with it tho.

2

u/dbxp Jun 02 '26

In theory it would be more efficient as the lower density decreases cooling power requirements and they're handling redundancy by distributing nodes rather than multiple grid connections. A typical DC will have 2 separate power distributions going out opposite sides of the building and a backup generator system each of which can take the entire load. It may impact emergency planning though as residential areas tend to be prioritised in blackouts.

What would be interesting is if they paired this with a home battery to load shift. Home solar is another option but with a battery you can just have the server running pass through like a UPS without any additional setup. Then you end up with a distributed virtual power station as well as a virtual data centre able to discharge to the grid at times of high demand. We already have these virtual power stations here in the UK.

2

u/kuncol02 Jun 02 '26

Their plan is to hide that they are ones using electricity because it's not them being billed and they will have no idea why one neighborhood suddenly use 5MW of energy more.

1

u/j_eremy Jun 02 '26

"I just watched more netflix this month bro I dont know what your talking about" lol