ZURICH, June 29 — The race to build more artificial intelligence data centres is running into an increasingly expensive obstacle: extreme weather.

Record-breaking heatwaves, floods, wildfires and violent storms are emerging as major risks to the facilities powering AI, raising fears of higher insurance bills, power shortages and costly outages.

“Severe weather is no longer something that can be treated as a background exposure,” Patrick McBride, Zurich Insurance’s head of international construction said in an interview today with US business news outlet CNBC.

The insurer said extreme weather has become the biggest source of losses in its US data centre construction portfolio over the past three years, accounting for about a third of all claims.

The warning comes as tech giants pour billions into AI infrastructure, with many new data centres being built outside traditional hubs and into cheaper rural areas that are often more exposed to tornadoes, floods, hail and wildfires.

Citing climate risk firm First Street, CNBC reported that roughly 79 per cent of the world’s data centre capacity already faces elevated risks from hazards including flooding, extreme winds and fires.

Heat poses a double challenge because data centres need enormous amounts of electricity to stay cool just as air conditioners are driving electricity demand to its peak.

“Data centres need the most energy exactly when the grid has the least available to give,” Rhizome chief executive Mishal Thadani was quoted as saying.

Rhizome is a US AI software company that helps utilities manage power grid risks from climate change.

Cooling already accounts for about 40 per cent of a data centre’s electricity use under normal conditions, with that figure climbing further during heatwaves.

Operators are responding by redesigning facilities to cope with rising temperatures instead of treating extreme weather as a rare event.

Microsoft said it is designing its latest data centres with stronger cooling systems, redundancy and real-time monitoring to withstand harsher environmental conditions.

Nvidia said its newest AI servers can operate with warmer cooling liquid, reducing energy needed to keep chips at safe temperatures.

According to the news report, climate resilience is rapidly becoming as important as computing power, with some developers now explicitly factoring future temperature rises into the design of new AI facilities.