The latest clue AI demand remains smoking hot: Elevators.
Otis CEO Judy Marks told Yahoo Finance today that the company is seeing very robust demand for its new AI data center-friendly elevator.
Said Marks, “It’s a very durable elevator that handles a much heavier load … So in a chip factory, if you need to move precious cargo such as rack servers, you need a more robust elevator. You need it more rugged, which means it’s got a heavy-duty frame. It’s got extra cushioning.”
“It’s just really a new offering we now have brought across the globe, starting in North America across a wide range of loads, so 6,000 to 20,000 pounds … So it has to always be available in these kind of intense, high-demand facilities, and obviously comes with a much higher price point.”
This is bizzare. This has nothing to do with AI, so far as I can tell, and everything to do with “an elevator” that can handle heavier loads.
An elevator is a mechanical device which lifts or descends. It uses cables and a pulley from the top, or a hydraulic ram from the bottom, or rarely a motor geared to pinions on the sides, and those things are mechanically limited by the materials used to make them and the absolute pull of gravity.
OK, so OTIS has a “new” elevator that can lift heavier loads. Any reason you couldn’t use it to hoist, say, flat steel in a fabrication plant or pallets of boxes of frozen spinach in a warehouse? This sounds to me like “AI washing”, the same way corporations used to add “dot com” to their corporate name and get a quick buzz.
Seriously. Am I missing something? They have an elevator which can lift heavier things than before. And this is “AI”?
Yup. Remember Allbirds, the shoe company, pivoting to AI data centers last week? I mean seriously, why them when we already had a shoe company called ASICS???
They have a new range of products that are useful for data centers and other infrastructure. It seems logical that they looked at the potential market and noticed it was growing. Had it been growing before? Probably, but not as much.
Similar perhaps to the companies that provide cooling for data centers. Have you noticed the sales growth for those types of products from, say, Vertiv?
While traditionally, data centers were mostly single-story buildings, modern, space-constrained, or urban data centers frequently have two or more floors, often up to 3-6 stories. However, single-story facilities remain common due to simpler, less costly construction for high floor-loading capacity.
What a market! Harry, send out a press release! We’ve got two buildings that need a heavy lift elevator!
