Data centers have been around for decades, gulping down electricity while they ensure that everything from your favorite streaming show to your online grocery order functions smoothly. What's less familiar is how the rapid fluctuations in data centers' appetites can break essential equipment at the facilities. Cranks on small natural gas combustion engines used to generate power at data centers have broken off, several of those people said. AI data centers can put this volatility on steroids. "We're building the chips and processors" but also using them in the company's own data centers, Harris said.