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Greg Case says interruptions could cost millions per minute. Aon is pursuing both safer facility designs and new pools of insurance capital.
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Aon CEO Greg Case says clustered AI data-center capacity could become difficult to insure, limiting developers’ access to debt unless risks are better measured and mitigated. Aon is working with developers on facility design and location, and has established insurance facilities of $10 billion for data centers and $2.5 billion for energy. Case also proposes bringing institutional and other investors into risk-bearing, but says they need reliable exposure estimates—including the chance of large losses occurring together—to commit capital.
Case estimates a data-center outage could cost millions of dollars per minute in business interruption; this is a potential exposure, not a reported loss.
Aon’s $10 billion data-center and $2.5 billion energy facilities provide insurance capacity, not construction financing.
Case estimates insurers hold about $4.5 trillion in capital and argues capacity should double or triple across emerging risks, not data centers alone.
Clustering billions of dollars of AI equipment in a few locations could leave developers struggling to secure insurance—and then financing. Aon CEO Greg Case delivered that warning in an October 28 interview with CNBC, arguing that concentrated computing capacity could threaten projects’ access to debt markets.
The potential loss extends beyond the equipment itself. Case said data centers could measure business interruption at millions of dollars per minute. That is his assessment of potential exposure, not a tally of losses already incurred: the cost of operations stopping adds to the hardware risk.
Aon’s response begins before a developer buys coverage. The company said it works with developers on facility design and location, reducing the potential for business interruption and arranging insurance that can support financing. Case described this as engineering work aimed at understanding risk, rather than an exercise confined to choosing a policy.
Alongside that work, Aon has developed a $10 billion data-center insurance facility and a $2.5 billion energy facility. These are pools of insurance capacity for particular industries or risks—not construction funds.
Engineering addresses the exposure; Case also wants more money available to absorb it. He estimated that the global insurance industry has about $4.5 trillion in capital and argued that it needs to double or triple. That assessment covers cyber, AI, data centers and other emerging risks, not data centers alone.
His proposed sources include institutional investors, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and wealthy individuals. Case estimated that these investors represent a potential capital pool of about $250 trillion, a fraction of which could increase insurance capacity. His strategy would draw on those investors to help finance risks traditionally carried by insurance companies and reinsurers.
Accessing that money depends on making the risks understandable. Case said exposures must be measured accurately enough to give investors confidence to commit capital. Those investors would need to assess the possibility of large losses occurring together.
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