U.S. Data Center Construction Skyrockets to $42 Billion Annualized Pace by October 2025
The infrastructure arms race hits warp speed—American soil is now absorbing data center investments at a blistering $42 billion annualized clip. Forget gradual growth; this is a full-scale construction boom rewriting the physical backbone of the digital economy.
The Power Grid's New Boss
These energy-guzzling fortresses aren't just being built; they're commandeering local power capacities, pushing utilities to the brink and sparking a nationwide scramble for electricity. It's industrial-scale demand hitting a grid that wasn't ready for its new, hungriest customer.
Silicon's Real Estate Grab
The land rush is on. From Virginia's 'Data Center Alley' to unexpected midwestern plots, developers are snapping up parcels, transforming quiet counties into strategic assets for AI, cloud computing, and yes—crypto mining operations seeking stable, scalable homes.
The $42 Billion Reality Check
That staggering figure represents more than steel and silicon. It's capital flooding into a sector betting big on perpetual data growth. Wall Street loves a predictable capex story—even if it occasionally confuses spending with a viable long-term strategy.
This building frenzy cuts both ways. It lays the physical groundwork for the next decade of innovation but also concentrates immense infrastructural—and financial—risk. One thing's certain: the race to house the world's data just found its new velocity.
Data center construction accelerated rapidly
Data center construction accelerated rapidly from a low baseline. With just $1.4B in construction in 2014, 2025 turned into a record year. The planning of data centers is already shaping business decisions across industries, as the new construction competes with the plans for offices, warehouses, and industrial construction.
Land and power source decisions are also key, as new high-capacity compute centers are being planned. Rough estimates of costs for data centers range between $600 to $1,100 per square foot, including equipment peripherals. Large data centers can cost between $250M to $500M, while small facilities can reach $2M to $5M.
The biggest effect of planned data centers will be their electricity demand. The share of data centers may rise from roughly 2% today to 9% by 2050. Data centers are already making up a significant share of electricity usage in some regions.
The effect of data center construction is also affecting commodity markets like copper, as well as some precious metals. The effect goes beyond the elevated price of computational components, memory, and other elements of AI computation.
On a global scale, data center construction is expected to reach $300B in 2026, and over $760B by 2035. The USA remains a leader, with the fastest available financing and suitable locations.
Bottlenecks may include energy contracts, copper prices, and even local opposition to data centers due to pollution and water consumption.
Former crypto firms boost data center construction
Former crypto firms, which also supplied cloud computing, are one of the drivers behind large-scale data center construction. Applied Digital, formerly Applied Blockchain, is among the planners of some of the biggest US data centers.
Applied Digital recently started the construction of a 430 MW data center, building a campus at an undisclosed location in the USA. Following the news, APLD shares recovered to $37.01, trading NEAR their all-time peak.
IREN is the other former mining company planning several large-scale 2GW and 750 MW data centers in Texas and other locations, with expected expansions of existing data, cloud, and mining centers. The focus on data centers also boosted IREN stock to $52.52, near its higher range for the past 12 months.
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