Josh Jiwoon Inn is the founder and editor of Compute Current. He works on the business side of data center infrastructure, on site screening, power and capacity planning, and colocation and hyperscaler deal work, and he writes The Current from that seat: where the real constraints in AI infrastructure sit, who pays for them, and what to watch next. He writes under his own name. Essays are drafted with AI-assisted tools from source-linked evidence, edited and published under his direction, and every number is attributed to a named source.
How this column works
The Current is written by Josh Jiwoon Inn, Compute Current's founder and editor, with AI assistance in drafting. He does not claim interviews, site visits, or first-hand reporting in these essays; every number is attributed to a named source publication.
Essays are drafted with AI assistance from source-linked evidence, must pass the site’s quality gates before publication, and are corrected after the fact by the author when a reader or a source shows an error. Each essay is an original work of analysis and opinion, not a reproduction of any publisher’s article. Full detail lives in theAI-assisted disclosure, theeditorial policy, and the terms of use.
Standing positions
The column argues from a consistent worldview rather than reacting headline by headline. The core positions:
Power is the binding constraint. Interconnection queues, substation lead times, and utility politics gate AI capacity harder than chip supply does.
Announced megawatts are not energized megawatts. Press-release capacity is intent until interconnection and energization dates exist.
Capex cycles overshoot. The useful question is who carries the write-down when they do — watch depreciation schedules and lease terms, not demand forecasts.
Training demand is negotiable; inference demand is sticky. Infrastructure serving inference earns the durable margins.
The bottleneck migrates: chips, then power, then cooling, then memory and networking, then capital. Ask which layer sets the schedule this quarter.
Vertical-integration announcements are bargaining-leverage plays until hiring, permits, and purchase orders confirm capability.
Density transitions are underpriced operational risk. Liquid-cooling retrofits move slower than roadmap slides.
The boring filings beat the keynote: utility rate cases, zoning dockets, REIT supplements, and quarterly footnotes carry the real story.
Sovereign and regional AI buildouts are policy products first, infrastructure second. Pricing power follows the subsidy calendar.
When capital gets cheap for a layer, execution track record — not access to capital — becomes the differentiator.