By Laila Kearney | REUTERS
The amount of data center supply under construction in North America’s top markets jumped by about 70% compared to a year ago to a record 3.9 gigawatts, according to CBRE Group research released on Tuesday.
Data centers are essentially giant computer warehouses, but they are measured more broadly by the amount of power that they use.
As the world’s largest technology companies race to expand their artificial intelligence and cloud computing businesses, power demand from data centers has ballooned.
In the first half of 2024, more than 500 megawatts of new data centers, or roughly equivalent to all of the existing capacity in Silicon Valley, were rolled out in the eight biggest markets in the United States and Canada, according to CBRE.
New data center inventory grew by 10% in the first six months of the year, while jumping 23% from a year earlier, the report said.
The eight main North American data center markets are Northern Virginia, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; Silicon Valley in central California; Chicago; Phoenix, Arizona; the New York Tri-State Area; Atlanta; and Hillsboro in Oregon.
“There was a time when the average Arizonan did not hear about, or even know much about, data centers. However, the demand for data management and large-scale cloud computing is bringing these large projects closer to end users. The infrastructure of the internet is being built out in a large way this year. It is thrilling to assist in solving problems related to bringing data centers online in a sustainable manner.”
-Taylor Roderick, senior transactional attorney at Rose Law Group
