The AI Buildout Is so Big Even a Haunted House Owner Wants in

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00:00About an hour's drive from Philadelphia, an abandoned state medical institution is giving

00:04locals a fright, but not for the reason you might think. Real estate developer Derek Strine

00:08believes artificial intelligence is here to stay. For Strine, that means trading in ghosts for

00:12gigabytes, but some serious work is in order. First, the grounds are currently home to an

00:17operational haunted house attraction. Pennhurst Asylum, as it's known, has become a local fixture

00:21that draws thousands of visitors every year. Strine wants to level the buildings and make

00:25way for big, humming data centers, but the site needs a lot of infrastructure upgrades.

00:29It'll have to drop up to 400,000 homes, then there's the legacy of the site itself. Long

00:34before it was a Halloween haunt, Pennhurst was a state-run institution for disabled people,

00:38and one with a dark past. Conditions at the facility were so bad that it became a flashpoint

00:42in the disability rights movement. It shut down for good in the 1980s. The fact that Strine

00:46is willing to tussle with all these obstacles shows how intense the frenzy for data centers

00:50has become. Artificial intelligence infrastructure spending could surpass $3 trillion in the next

00:55three years, and investment giants like Blackstone and Brookfield are muscling their way in. Plenty

00:59of people say there's too much money flooding in for everyone to win. Power is stretched

01:02in key markets, and navigating local governments is tricky. Yet the prospect of big fortunes

01:07and surging valuations have prompted developers like Strine to wager their hard-won money on

01:11the actions.