Surely by now, all of you in the data center world have read Bloomberg’s recent report that claims “almost half of all U.S. data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled.” There’s a big difference between a “delay” or a “cancellation,” and a case-by-case review of what’s happening would probably reveal the data center industry is still quite healthy.
At AFCOM-Informa’s Data Center World in Washington D.C., a blank “pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey” data center construction map outside the expo hall filled up quickly as attendees and exhibitors inserted their current projects.
While the fight for transformers, switchgear and batteries is real, no one gave off a “Hunger Games” vibe.
As you’ll see on RCRTech AI TechTalk with CBRE’s Pat Lynch and Gordon Dolven, we’ve entered an “environment with sub-2% vacancy in North America for turnkey colocation space.” In CBRE’s recent “data center trends to watch” there’s acknowledgement that neocloud, GPU-as-a-service providers and AI startups paying premiums for scale are inspiring operators to “hold full-building configurations to maximize value.” But that doesn’t mean an industry apocalypse; it just means data center operators are strategically hoarding.
Just last week, CBRE’s “2026 North American Data Center Investor Intentions Survey” indicated the data center industry is still booming, all be it with evolving site-selection decision-making and strategies for leasing and pre-leasing, as well as behind-the-meter strategies. The survey found:
- More than half of investors recently surveyed by CBRE expect to increase their capital allocations to data centers this year by as much as 10%.
- Fifty-five percent of surveyed investors said they will increase their data center buying activity by more than 10%.
- Over 50% of respondents have investments in turnkey-wholesale, turnkey-hyperscale and powered-shell centers.
That means that power availability and shortages of transformers and switchgear are, no doubt, a growing challenge, but they are not insurmountable.
As Crusoe noted in last week’s RCRTech AI TechTalk interview, there’s a greater focus on brownfield sites in which “you take someone else’s envelope and fit in your AI compute inside,” as well as “a lot of infrastructure in the U.S. that can be retrofitted, with credible paths to the megawatts needed.
To me that means that the data center industry remains extremely healthy, with record-breaking demand. Even if projects are delayed, it doesn’t mean they won’t happen. The industry is rapidly developing answers to existing problems, with behind-the-meter solutions, diversification of suppliers, and direct investment in local, on-site power generation. Additionally, many states are speeding up permitting and tax incentives to further move things along.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
Nokia optical networks – Fueled by Google’s per-watt improvements: Google TPU 8t specifically for massive frontier model training and the TPU 8i for high-speed inference is expected to bring 2x per-watt improvement and 80% gain in performance-per-dollar for inference tasks.
Cisco qubit strategy: Current quantum computers don’t generate enough qubits to address the class of complex problems quantum computing is designed to solve, so Cisco is getting ahead with a new switch that will connect quantum computers.
Subsea and Space data centers: Companies are exploring ocean-based and space-based data centers, and GlobalData’s Martina Raveni says studies are underway about ecological impacts and self-healing capabilities to assess viability.
AI Today: What You Need to Know
Pace ‘Texas-first’ DC: Pace’s Lone Star Project is a “Texas-first” data center for 100MW of behind-the-meter natural gas capacity that it plans to scale to 1 GW in Glasscock County, where it will focus on Texas people and Texas businesses.
Texas tax breaks for DCs: Texas lawmakers are considering changing existing tax breaks to data centers, which could amount to more than $3.2 billion in lost sales tax revenue over the next 2 years. This year, Texas will lose at least $1.3 billion.
Maine Gov. vetoes DC moratorium: Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed what would have been the country’s first moratorium on data centers, citing the lack of an exemption for a project in Jay, which was to counter the loss of a mill in 2023.
$3.8B transformer market: Mordor Intelligence says the domestic transformer market will reach nearly $3.8 billion this year, but will grow to $5.6 billion by 2031. The demand for three-phase transformers, in particular, has led to supply deficits.
Korea’s semi industry: Semiconductor exports underpin Korea’s economic growth, but data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the country’s potential growth rate may decline to 1.57% next year.
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