Modular data centres: out of the box

Beijing's order this week to unwind Meta's $2bn purchase of Manus has produced predictable gloom about Chinese AI exits. The wrong story. The trade is not who buys Chinese software. It is who builds the boxes that all software runs on. Forecasts of US data centre capex run to $650bn for 2026 alone. About half of that nominal pipeline will not be built on time. The binding constraint is not capital…