New Delhi, June 12 -- As artificial intelligence drives an unprecedented wave of data centre construction across the United States, Silicon Valley's biggest companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to train the electricians, welders and pipe fitters needed to build it all.

The artificial intelligence industry has a problem that no amount of software engineering can solve. It needs people who can lay pipes, wire circuits and weld steel, and right now there are not nearly enough of them.

In the space of days, two of the world's largest technology companies announced major investments in skilled trades training, signalling that the labour bottleneck threatening to slow the AI boom is no longer a peripheral concern for Big Tec...