
As pretty much anyone with a smart phone knows, ChatGPT—along with other AI aspirants— is just one of the newest and most power-hungry kids on a data-hogging block that includes cloud computing, e-commerce, the “internet of things,” blockchain networks and approximately one gazillion TikTok videos. “Whether you’re streaming videos, scrolling through apps on your phone, no matter how data is consumed, it’s routed through a data center,” says John McWilliams, head of data center insights for Cushman & Wakefield.

In real estate terms, he notes, “Data centers are what we have considered an alternate asset,” as opposed to, say, office, industrial, retail and multifamily. “But over the last 20 years—first with the big boom after cloud computing arrived, now with the emergence of generative AI—development has been growing rapidly, investment has been surging, and revenues the data center industry earns are increasing rapidly.” Given the uncertain prospects of traditionally mainstream asset classes, data centers are emerging even more from their niche status, he adds.
Rather than by acreage or square feet, as in other areas of commercial real estate, data center projects are gauged by the amount of electrical power they consume. “We measure the market in terms of capacity, megawatts or gigawatts,” says McWilliams. The sheer volume of data routed through these centers has grown tenfold over the last decade, to reach a projected total of 181 zettabytes this year, he says. For reference, a zettabyte is 1 trillion gigabytes, equivalent to about 250 billion DVDs. A December 2024 report by the Department of Energy estimated that the power consumed by data centers in the U.S. tripled over the past decade and could triple again by 2028, when it could consume up to 12% of the nation’s electricity.
AI will drive much of that growth. That ChatGPT query we opened with? It required nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a conventional search engine would. “As the demand for power has increased with the cloud and AI, the sites people need are much larger,” says Anne Rosenau, a managing director and a founding member of Cushman & Wakefield’s data center group, where she sits on the executive committee.

“Sites have gone from where people would buy 5 or 10 acres and 50 megawatts of power, to hyperscalers, private equity companies and co-location companies who are selling to the hyperscalers [looking for] 100-, 200-, 300-, 500-acre sites that have access to much more power.” These so-called hyperscalers are the primary actors in the global data center boom, Rosenau says, but she noted that there is still a strong market for much smaller “edge” sites where local brokers might play a part. Some operators are still focusing on “colo” centers, where they can lease server-rack space to smaller players.
Hot Data Center Markets
Rosenau, who brokered her first big tech deals with telecom projects in the late 1990s before today’s data centers came front and center, practices in northern Virginia, the epicenter of data center proliferation, which is estimated to support about 70% of global internet traffic.
Rosenau is adept at reeling off some reasons why: “There’s great access to technology, low incidence of natural disasters, and power has been cheaper than other big markets,” along with a connection to a robust fiber network and scads of tech talent. A 2023 market analysis by Newmark Group put Northern Virginia’s data center market at 3,400 megawatts—nearly three times the size of Dallas-Fort Worth the second busiest market. An additional 1,400 megawatts of capability is projected for northern Virginia by 2027. However, both Rosenau and the report authors note that growing local opposition and power capacity constraints are starting to slow the region’s growth.
The Dallas region, at more than 1,100 megawatts, is expected to grow by nearly 30% by 2027, spurred by lower power costs, good network connectivity, tax incentives and plentiful land. The next market down, by a hair, is Phoenix, which analysts projected could add nearly 50% in the next three years on the strength of cheaper power, fiber connectivity, a “pro-business environment” and open land. But Phoenix is also seeing a burgeoning semiconductor industry, which will compete for power and a limited water supply, which both industries need in copious amounts.

California’s Bay Area and Silicon Valley, now at about 750 megawatts, saw the earliest emergence of data centers as tech companies chose to co-locate their centers near their corporate headquarters. Though it’s projected to continue growing, earthquake concerns, restricted land availability and competition from other development are constraints.
Today, other markets are coming on strong, particularly in the Midwest and South. The Chicago metroplex already has a robust market of 1,000-plus megawatts, as its central location is popular with hyperscalers Microsoft and Meta. Land constraints there have prompted Compass Datacenters to take on the conversion of Sears’ 2.4 million square-foot former headquarters to a data center. As tight power delivery with long lead times slows development timelines around Chicago, other Midwest neighbors are seeing growing interest. Columbus, Ohio, has become a popular target, with about 40 centers run by 25 companies, and others are land banking sites of an average 200-plus acres for future development.
In addition to ample land that is zoned commercial, industrial or agricultural, low natural disaster risk and access to power and talent, Ohio offers data center developers a sales tax exemption for construction materials and equipment for investments and payrolls over a certain size.
Amazon Web Services in late 2024 purchased nearly 600 acres in Fayette County, Ohio—midway between Columbus and Dayton—for $102 million, part of Amazon’s announced plan to build up to eight data centers in Ohio and invest $10 billion by 2030 to develop them. Meanwhile, Vantage Data Centers announced it would open the first of three “hyperscale” data centers in New Albany, 20 minutes northeast of Columbus, later this year. Occupying a 70-acre site, the centers will total 1.5 million square feet, with a power capacity of 64 megawatts each. In Michigan, Microsoft purchased 316 acres in Kent County, south of Grand Rapids, in late 2024 from furniture maker Steelcase for a potential data center.
In Georgia, a company doing business as Atlas Development LLC in January filed a state application to seek rezoning to develop a 13-building data center campus costing $17 billion on 832 acres in Coweta County, 45 miles southwest of Atlanta. That project joins several other entities developing or operating data centers in the Atlanta area, including Digital Realty, CoreSite, Switch, Google, Microsoft, Flexential, H5, and QTS. In addition, Stream Data Centers has applied to build up to nine centers on 246 acres on the west side of Atlanta in Douglas County. Also in Douglas, Stack Infrastructure is developing two three-story data centers and has filed to build two additional two-story centers.