Live Panel: Building at the Roofline — Planning and Delivering Gigawatt-Scale AI Infrastructure#
@Scale: Networking 2026 digest Program Wildcard pick 25 August 2026
Omar Baldonado (Meta), Amrita Kenue (Meta), Lucas Benson (Microsoft), Nikita Parikh (Google)
- Why: Not a networking session — power, buildings, fiber, and accelerators sourced at the edge of what the supply ecosystem can deliver — but it defines the envelope every network design in this program lives inside: rack power, building capacity, multi-generation fleets, and component lead times bound what fabrics can even be built. The panel composition makes it concrete: per the conference page, the Microsoft panelist leads strategic sourcing for optics and switches supporting Azure's AI fleet, and the Google panelist is a next-generation networking sourcing lead — this is the layer above the network roadmap.
- What: Panel with infrastructure planning and technical sourcing leaders from Google, Meta, and Microsoft on long-range fleet strategy across multiple technology generations, multi-vendor orchestration, and the engineering realities of delivering AI infrastructure at gigawatt scale at the roofline of industry capacity.
- How: Live discussion, not a presented technique.
- Where applicable: Hyperscaler fleets, but the constraints discussed — power, lead times, multi-generation estates — are industry-wide. Any roadmap that assumes unconstrained optics, switch, or fiber supply should watch this.