Data Center Construction Boom Continues: 8 Projects to Watch in 2026

The ongoing artificial intelligence boom drove an exponential rise in data center construction in 2025. And investment into these artificial intelligence-fueling campuses is expected to grow even more across the U.S. in 2026 and beyond.

Data Center Investment in 2025

The enormous scope of current data center investment can be illustrated by an early 2025 funding commitment from some of the industry’s top players — a move that received a public blessing from U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Stargate Project was formed in January 2025 by artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT) and equity funders SoftBank, Oracle and MGX. The joint company plans to invest $500 billion over four years into building new AI infrastructure in the U.S. specifically for OpenAI. Trump announced the joint venture’s formation and investment plans during a White House press conference, flanked by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison.

U.S. data center investment in 2025 was driven by staggering amounts of funding from the world’s largest tech and software companies. Some highlights include:

• Meta broke ground on its 30^th data center in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, announced a new plant for El Paso, Texas, and its $1 billion Kansas City, Missouri, plant became operational
• A $50 billion investment from artificial intelligence startup Anthropic was announced to create data centers with fellow AI startup Fluidstack, beginning in Texas and New York.
• Vantage Data Centers broke ground on a $15 billion, 672-acre campus in Port Washington, Wisconsin, that will hold four data centers.
• A $100 billion investment from Amazon Web Services expanding its AWS Generative AI Innovation Center (launched in 2023), which has a roster of customers including Syngenta, AstraZeneca and Yahoo Finance

Total spending on U.S. data center construction starts alone reached an estimated $77.7 billion in 2025, a 190% year-over-year increase, according to a February 3, 2026, report from construction software solutions provider ConstructConnect.

According to the report, average monthly spending on data center starts jumped from around $500 million in mid-2021 to $6.5 billion in December 2025.

For the full year 2025, Virginia received the most data center start funding of any U.S. state at $15.3 billion, followed by Louisiana at $15 billion, Mississippi at $13.9 billion, and Texas at $13.4 billion.

No Signs of Slowing Down

Looking ahead at 2026, several indicators point to continued growth in data center construction. ConstructConnect is tracking 76 data center projects set to start in the U.S. in the next six months, valued at over $88 billion. That's already a 13% increase over spending on data center starts in all of 2025.

The Associated General Contractors’ 2026 Construction Outlook survey results found contractors are also expecting the market for data center construction to continue growing this year.  

When asked to estimate how available dollar value for data center projects would change in 2026, 65% of responding contractors expected an increase. Only 8% expected a decline.

Overall, a net 57% of responding contractors expected data center construction spending to increase in 2026, the highest percentage by category in this year’s AGC outlook survey and well above the second-highest category, power, at a net 34%.

Contractors have good reason to be optimistic: the data center construction boom requires millions of construction workers to get it all done.

A December 2025 report from tech business coalition the American Edge Project found the U.S. had 4,149 active data centers, and 2,788 more have been announced or are under construction.

The construction of those 2,788 data centers, according to AEP, will create roughly 4.7 million temporary construction-related jobs.

Even beyond 2026, the picture looks bright for data center momentum. Research firm McKinsey estimated in an April 2025 report that $7 trillion in capital expenditures will have gone to global data center infrastructure by 2030, with over 40% of that spending expected to take place in the U.S.

In a followup August 2025 report, McKinsey predicted 70% of that $7 trillion would be spent by hyperscalers — massive cloud service provider companies and data center builders like Google, Meta and Microsoft.

8 Data Center Projects to Watch in 2026

Here’s an overview of some of the largest data center projects happening in the U.S. right now, how much they cost, who is building them:

Information has been gathered from first-hand, official company and government sources unless otherwise noted. Listed contractors reflect those who have been publicly named and should not be considered exhaustive.

OpenAI: Stargate I

• Location: Abilene, Texas
• Cost: Not disclosed — falls under the $500 billion Stargate Project
• Size: Approximately 4,000,000 square feet¹
• Capacity: 1.2 gigawatts¹
• Contractor(s): Crusoe
• Expected completion: Partially online, fully operational by mid-2026¹

1) Data Center Dynamics, November 2025

Vantage Data Centers: Frontier

• Location: Shackelford County, Texas
• Cost: $25 billion
• Size: 3,700,000 square feet
• Capacity: 1.4 GW
• Contractor(s): Kiewit Corporation
• Expected completion: First building scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2026

AVAIO: Digital Leo

• Location: Little Rock, Arkansas
• Cost: $21 billion
• Size: Not disclosed — multi-building site on 760 acres
• Capacity: 1 GW long-term capacity
• Contractor(s): Not disclosed
• Expected completion: First phase complete and energized in June 2027

Amazon: Pennsylvania

• Location: Salem, Pennsylvania; Falls, Pennsylvania; more locations under consideration
• Cost: At least $20 billion
• Size: 1,000,000 square feet¹
• Capacity: Not disclosed
• Contractor(s): Northpoint Development
• Expected completion: Not disclosed

1) Bucks County Beacon, August 2025

Vantage Data Centers: Lighthouse

• Location: Port Washington, Wisconsin
• Cost: $15 billion
• Size: 2,500,000 square feet
• Capacity: 902 megawatts
• Contractor(s): Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., the Weitz Co., a Turner Construction–McCarthy Building Cos. JV, Michels
• Expected completion: 2028

Meta: Hyperion

• Location: Richland Parish, Louisiana
• Cost: Over $10 billion
• Size: 4,000,000 square feet
• Capacity: Scale up to 5 GW over several years
• Contractor(s): Turner Construction Company, DPR Construction, M.A. Mortenson
• Expected completion: 2030

Amazon: Richmond County

• Location: Richmond County, North Carolina
• Cost: $10 billion
• Size: Up to 20 buildings, each 200,000 square feet or more¹
• Capacity: Not disclosed
• Contractor(s): Walbridge Southeast²
• Expected completion: Not disclosed

1) Data Center Dynamics, October 2025
2) Richmond County Daily Journal, October 2025

Compass: Meridian

• Location: Meridian, Mississippi
• Cost: $10 billion
• Size: Eight buildings, 250,000 square feet each¹
• Capacity: 320 MW¹
• Contractor(s): Eutaw Construction
• Expected completion: 2033

1) Data Center Dynamics, February 2025