Epoch AI

Epoch AI describes itself as a data-first research nonprofit investigating the future of AI S-3613. Its public dataset of large AI data centres is an example of remote detection of data centres:

• Epoch's AI data centers hub S-3301, launched in November 2025 as the Frontier Data Centers Hub S-1411, identifies chillers and cooling towers in satellite images and corroborates them with permits and public disclosures to infer each facility's power capacity S-1411. It then estimates the compute installed, in H100-equivalents S-1411.
• At its launch in November 2025 the hub tracked 13 large US data centres S-1411. Epoch estimated that they held about 2.5 million, or about 15%, of the roughly 15 million H100-equivalents delivered to customers worldwide in the preceding several years S-1411. The data are released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence S-1411.
• By September 2026 the database still mostly covered US sites, and Epoch estimated its coverage of global deployed AI computing capacity at 44% (90% CI 24–81%) S-3301.
• A Federation of American Scientists report on tracking AI data centres with satellite imagery draws on the hub, to which its author contributed S-1409. An AI 2040 supplement on covert AI projects names Epoch's methods among those that intelligence services could use to locate AI data centres that are not specifically concealed S-1410.