Why Do AI Data Centres Use Water, and Where Does It Actually Go?

Follow the heat from a chip to a cooling tower to understand why AI water estimates differ and what a new data centre could mean for its neighbours. AI data centres use water in several places. Some use it directly to move or reject heat. Their electricity can require water at generating stations, and the factories making their chips use highly purified water. The quantity depends on the workload, building, weather, electricity supply and accounting boundary. A figure for one facility cannot establish how much water disappears each time somebody sends a message to a chatbot.