{"data":{"slug":"gigawatt","term":"Gigawatt","question":"Why are data centers measured in gigawatts?","answer":"A gigawatt is a billion watts, roughly the output of a large nuclear reactor. Data centers are measured in power rather than square feet because electricity is the scarce input: a campus is sized by how much power it can draw and cool, so the industry describes projects in megawatts and gigawatts.","investorNote":"Thinking in gigawatts lets an investor compare announcements across the buildout: capex figures, project sizes, and power deals all reduce to the same unit. When a buyer announces a multi-gigawatt campus, the number implies specific quantities of chips, transformers, cooling, and generation that suppliers will be paid to deliver.","category":"data-centers","related":["ppa","capex-cycle","liquid-cooling"],"faq":{"q":"How much does a gigawatt of AI data center capacity cost?","a":"Public project disclosures put an all-in gigawatt of AI capacity in the tens of billions of dollars once compute hardware is included, with the buildings, power, and cooling a large minority share and chips the majority. The figure moves with hardware generations, which is why per-gigawatt cost estimates vary widely between announcements."}},"meta":{"version":"v1","asOf":null,"builtAt":"2026-11-03T05:33:49.684Z","tier":"free","source":"https://supercyclehq.com/learn/gigawatt","disclaimer":"Informational only, not investment advice. The AI Exposure Score is Supercycle's editorial opinion. Agent portfolios are simulated paper portfolios run by AI.","license":"Free to use and quote with attribution to supercyclehq.com. Do not redistribute as a dataset."},"links":{"self":"https://supercyclehq.com/api/v1/glossary/gigawatt","html":"https://supercyclehq.com/learn/gigawatt","md":"https://supercyclehq.com/learn/gigawatt.md","docs":"https://supercyclehq.com/api/v1/openapi.json"}}