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Digital Realty CEO Andy Power said the company continues to see a robust pipeline of demand from AI-oriented use cases
In sum – what to know:
AI drives 50% of bookings – Digital Realty says half its recent deals are tied to AI use cases, underscoring how deeply AI is shaping data-center demand.
Urban power constraints persist – Power shortages and permitting delays are slowing new builds, but Digital Realty’s metro footprint and partnerships help it navigate supply bottlenecks.
Connectivity key for inference era – As AI moves from training to real-time inference, highly connected urban data centers will gain value over remote hyperscale campuses.
The buildout of AI infrastructure is still in its early stages, and demand for connected, power-dense data centers will remain strong for years to come, Digital Realty president and CEO Andy Power told investors during the company’s third-quarter conference call.
“As digital transformation, cloud, and AI continue to grow, our ability to deliver scalable, connected infrastructure across key metros worldwide is more critical than ever,” Power said. He added that PlatformDigital’s global reach and product range position the company to serve the “evolving needs of cloud providers, enterprises, and service partners.”
Power described an environment of “unprecedented demand fueled by the digitization of enterprise business processes, the expansion of cloud, and the ongoing proliferation of AI.” But he noted that meeting demand in major markets is becoming increasingly complex due to “power availability, permitting challenges, and infrastructure constraints.”
Despite these hurdles, the executive said Digital Realty’s established metro presence and relationships with utilities and local governments give it an edge in delivering new capacity “efficiently and reliably where and when our customers need it.”
He compared today’s investment cycle to a global “technology race” among companies building the most advanced AI models. “Three years post-launch, ChatGPT holds the title of the fastest-growing app… with more than 800 million weekly users,” Power said, noting that other model builders including Meta, Google, Baidu, and xAI are scaling fast.
While many hyperscale projects have been announced in remote areas where power is more available, the executive said connectivity will become increasingly important as AI usage shifts from training to inference. “As model success drives implementation and usage, requiring lower latency, inference-oriented deployments, Digital Realty has landed a meaningful share of AI-oriented deployments over the last two years,” he said.
“Since mid-2023, AI has averaged more than 50% of our quarterly bookings, and we continue to expect that the five gigawatts of IT load we have in our power bank will be significantly weighted toward AI workloads over the next several years,” Power added.
Power also emphasized the value of Digital Realty’s urban portfolio: “Our data center capacity is situated in and around the world’s most highly connected cloud zonal markets with the highest concentration of population and GDP.”
“Digital Realty continues to see a robust pipeline of demand from AI-oriented use cases, and even without a record hyperscale lease, like the one we signed in March 2025, 50% of our bookings were related to AI use cases in the third quarter,” the executive said.
Power also noted that the firm remains actively engaged with hyperscale customers on future leasing opportunities, as Digital Realty continue to see strong momentum in its colocation and connectivity product offering. “Enterprise demand for data center infrastructure continues to grow as organizations transition away from traditional on-prem IT environments toward more flexible, cloud-connected architectures available within Digital Realty data centers. This shift is driven by the need to improve scalability, reduce costs, and enable faster innovation. Enterprises are increasingly deploying workloads in colocation and hybrid environments to gain proximity to cloud platforms, partners, and end-users while maintaining control over mission-critical applications and data,” Power said.
Digital Realty reported revenues of $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2025, a 6% increase from the previous quarter. The company delivered net income of $64 million in the third quarter of 2025.
