Will AI be checkmated by "water"? The full picture of the "zero-water design" Microsoft is investing heavily in, and the investment opportunities

From 2024 to 2025, the explosive spread of artificial intelligence (AI) technology began to expose the physical limitations of digital infrastructure. Until now, it was widely recognized that the primary constraint in the data center (DC) industry was the supply capacity of "electricity". However, a series of investigative reports by major media outlets such as Reuters and The Guardian have highlighted the issue of "water resources" as a bottleneck that is just as serious, if not more so, than electricity. This is because training and inference for generative AI require vast computational resources, and to handle the resulting heat generated by servers, conventional data centers rely on evaporative cooling systems that use massive amounts of water.