Digital Realty CTO on AI tokenomics and datacentre infrastructure

Chris Sharp, CTO of Digital Realty, discusses how the artificial intelligence boom is challenging current datacentre infrastructure. He emphasizes the rapid innovation in AI silicon, the growing importance of inferencing workloads, and the need for the industry to adopt “tokenomics”—the watt-to-token production ratio—as a key metric instead of just megawatts. Sharp details how Digital Realty is preparing for high-density, next-generation AI hardware, focusing on advanced cooling solutions and strategic infrastructure planning to support future demands even as customer needs evolve from training to private AI and agentic workflows.