- The world is on track to spend more than $1 trillion building data centers in 2026, and the biggest spenders keep raising their budgets.
- Demand looks real right now, with vacancy rates near record lows, but the profits to justify that spending remain mostly a promise.
- The next 18 months, through 2027, will be the real test of whether the spending was justified, as new capacity comes online and faces pressure to show returns.
Most interactions with artificial intelligence, from a ChatGPT query to a generated image, run through a data center, a warehouse-sized building packed with thousands of computer chips that can draw as much electricity as a small city. The companies behind those systems are spending on them more aggressively than at any point on record.
Global spending on data centers is on track to pass $1 trillion this year, according to Dell'Oro Group. In the United States alone, authorities approved 176 new data centers in 2025, the most since the first such permit was issued in 1976, according to a Business Insider analysis.
Construction spending reached $49.5 billion in the opening months of 2026, more than triple the figure a year earlier, figures from ConstructConnect show.
The doubts have also grown louder in step with the spending. In the past week alone, a record earnings report, the largest IPO in history, and two city council votes each pointed to the same unresolved question from a different direction.
