The Investor, The Architect, and The Operator: Why Data Center Ops is an Afterthought (and Why That’s a Billion-Dollar Mistake)

In my years as a Merchant Mariner, I saw firsthand how every operation—whether it was running a ship, managing a port, or keeping a global supply chain moving—relied on three key personas: The Investor, The Architect, and The Operator.

It turns out, this paradigm exists everywhere. And nowhere is it more apparent than in the billion-dollar boom of Bitcoin mining and data center deployments. Companies are spending eye-watering amounts on infrastructure, yet operations—the people who actually make it run—are often an afterthought. It's like launching a fleet of cargo ships and forgetting to train the crew.

The Three Personas of Every Business

1. The Investor – The decision-makers with the checkbooks. They are the farthest from the day-to-day action and have to make large-scale financial bets based on limited information.
2. The Architect – The builders, the designers, the ones who turn capital into infrastructure. They see blueprints, not bottlenecks.
3. The Operator – The boots on the ground. The ones who actually make it work. They are closest to the information, the inefficiencies, and the ways to optimize performance.

The further you go down this hierarchy, the more real-world information you get. Yet, in many industries—including Bitcoin mining and data centers—Operators are rarely consulted when decisions are being made.

The $500 Billion Oversight

Take the $500 billion Stargate project from Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank. A bold bet on AI-powered data centers, starting with a $1.1 billion site in Abilene, Texas. (Business Insider)

Or Core Scientific’s $4 billion transition from Bitcoin mining to AI-focused data centers in Texas. (GovTech)

These projects are colossal. But how much of that budget is allocated to training the teams who will run them?

Operations is often the last consideration—if it's considered at all. Yet, Operators understand better than anyone how to maximize efficiency, reduce downtime, and optimize performance.

Blueprints vs. Reality

Architects are great at building. But they don't always see how lines on a page translate into real-world efficiency.

• Cooling systems are installed in the wrong place? Operators will be the ones sweating (literally) as they scramble to fix it.
• Energy distribution isn't optimized? Operators are the ones dealing with power-hungry AI racks that trip breakers.
• Hardware maintenance protocols don’t exist? Operators will be the ones playing whack-a-mole with failing ASICs.

And yet, Operators are rarely brought into the ideation phase.

The Most Successful Companies Flip the Script

The companies that get the best results? They start with the end in mind—meaning they design for operations first.

Take Blackstone, for example. As one of the biggest AI infrastructure investors, they’re proactively creating workforce development programs to train data center technicians. (Business Insider)

Or consider AFCOM, which offers certification programs specifically to bridge the knowledge gap between data center construction and operations. (AFCOM)

A Call to Action: Think Like an Operator

As Bitcoin mining and AI data centers scale into the next trillion-dollar industry, it’s time to rethink how we design, build, and run these facilities.

• Investors need to listen to their Operators—because the money is won or lost on the efficiency of the operation.
• Architects need to collaborate with Operators—because a design that doesn’t work in the real world is just a very expensive piece of paper.
• Operators need to be in the room when decisions are made—because they are the ones who turn infrastructure into profit.

Because at the end of the day, even the most advanced data center is only as good as the team that runs it.