100 Gigawatts: The Data Center Supercycle That's Rewriting Energy Policy
Power has replaced transistor density as the binding constraint on computing growth. The consequences are reshaping everything from real estate markets to geopolitics.
JLL’s 2026 Global Data Center Outlook contains a number that should stop anyone in the computing industry cold: 100 gigawatts of new data center capacity is projected to come online between 2026 and 2030. That’s $1.2 trillion in real estate value alone, before you account for the $1–2 trillion in IT equipment going inside those buildings.
One hundred gigawatts. For reference, the entire US nuclear fleet generates about 95 gigawatts. We’re building the equivalent of the country’s nuclear power infrastructure, from scratch, in five years, to run AI workloads.
This isn’t a forecast from a consulting firm chasing fees. It’s a count of facilities already in planning, permitting, or construction. JLL tracks 770 future hyperscale facilities in the pipeline. Wells Fargo’s infrastructure team projects hyperscaler capacity doubling from 49 gigawatts in 2025 to 98 gigawatts by 2027. The top five hyperscalers alone have committed $710 billion in capex for 2026, supporting 35 gigawatts of new or refreshed capacity.