Managed growth defines the next phase of the Americas data center market
The Americas data center sector continues to expand rapidly, but the defining theme of the market’s next phase is managed growth rather than unconstrained acceleration. Across the region, governments, utilities and local jurisdictions are introducing new regulatory guardrails and infrastructure requirements designed to oversee power demand, land and natural resource use, and long-term grid stability.
At the same time, demand fundamentals remain exceptionally strong. Capacity under construction reached 25.3GW, with pre-commitment rates approaching 89%, while vacancy remained near historic lows at 4.2%—even after 4.0GW of new colocation supply was delivered in 2025. These conditions indicate that supply expansion continues to trail hyperscale, AI, HPC and neocloud demand, with availability unlikely to ease before the end of the decade.
Regulatory changes are increasingly shaping how and where development occurs. New permitting rules, zoning adjustments, infrastructure cost-sharing requirements, and local moratoriums are slowing approvals in several established markets and pushing activity toward tertiary locations where power availability, permitting timelines, and land availability provide faster paths to deployment.
As a result, geographic diversification across the Americas is accelerating, even as core markets remain essential for latency-sensitive workloads such as AI inferencing, streaming, financial trading and IoT.
Key Regional Highlights
- Operational capacity: The Americas now hosts 43.4 GW of operational data center capacity, with 93.6% located in the United States.
- Construction activity: Development activity remains elevated, with 25.3 GW currently under construction and nearly 89% pre-committed prior to delivery.
- Market concentration: Northern Virginia continues to lead global development activity, while emerging power-advantaged markets such as West Texas and tertiary U.S. regions are gaining momentum.
- Availability trends: Large contiguous capacity blocks remain scarce, reinforcing continued reliance on the development pipeline to meet occupier demand.
