What started as a relatively niche sector a few years ago has transformed into a powerhouse of construction activity, with no signs of a slowdown this year.
Data centers continue to drive significant growth in nonresidential construction planning, said Sarah Martin, associated director of forecasting at Dodge Construction Network. These projects contributed to a 19% increase in planning activity since December 2023, compared to just 5% growth without their inclusion, according to Dodge.
That momentum shows no signs of fading.
J.P. Morgan estimates spending on data centers could add between 10 to 20 basis points to U.S. economic growth in 2025 and 2026, according to Reuters. Big tech companies are a major reason for the surge, doubling down on data center investments in order to meet growing artificial intelligence demand.
For example, President Donald Trump recently announced Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle. The JV plans to invest $100 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure, with the potential to scale up to $500 billion by 2028. Each data center facility will span about 500,000 square feet, according to Stargate.
Here are some other major data center projects that top tech giants plan to build in 2025:
Amazon
Amazon is going big on data centers, with plans to invest $150 billion in the coming 15 years on its infrastructure to handle the expected demand for artificial intelligence and other cloud computing needs, Bloomberg reported.
The tech giant first started opening data centers in central Ohio in 2016, and recently announced a $10 billion plan to further expand its cloud computing infrastructure in the state, per a December news release from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. The new investment follows a $7.8 billion plan announced in 2023, including work in New Albany, Ohio.
Those planned projects include a new $2 billion data center campus in Sunbury, Ohio. Amazon’s facility will occupy about 200 acres in an industrial park in the city, according to WBNS10. Construction of the first 450,000-square-foot building is expected to begin in January 2028 and be complete by December 2034, Data Center Dynamics reported.
The Mountain View, California-based multinational corporation plans to continue its aggressive expansion into data center construction, with a number of high-profile projects slated for 2025, according to Devon Smiley, communications manager of technical infrastructure at Google.
For example, Google broke ground in July 2023 on its first data center in Arizona. The site will span 750,000 square feet, with the first phase due in July, according to Data Center Dynamics.
Plans feature a $600 million facility to support some of the firm’s signature services, such as Gmail and Google Cloud. The Mesa project will tie into the establishment of a new Phoenix cloud region, expanding Google’s digital infrastructure footprint in the area. No general contractor has been confirmed yet, said Smiley.
In the Midwest, Google broke ground in April 2024 on a $2 billion data center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The facility will power its global AI and cloud infrastructure, according to the company. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. will give Google a 35-year data center sales tax exemption for the first $800 million invested, with options to extend up to 50 years. Atlanta-based Holder Construction is the general contractor on the project, according to local outlet 21Alive.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, the tech giant’s newest date center project in Lincoln is under construction on roughly 580 acres, according to the Nebraska Examiner. That project complements a separate $750 million facility under construction in Omaha, according to a government release. Once complete, Google will have four data center campuses in the state, according to the company. Google did not disclose the projects’ general contractors.
Meta
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has big plans for data center construction. On Jan. 24, CEO Mark Zuckerburg called 2025 “a defining year for AI” in a Facebook post, and claimed the company would construct a data center large enough to “cover a significant part of Manhattan.” Zuckerburg said Meta will bring on about 1 gigawatt of computing power in 2025, and plans to invest heavily in growing the firm’s AI teams.
That ambtious goal aligns with previously shared plans. In 2024, the firm announced new data center campuses in:
- Jeffersonville, Indiana, awarded to Turner Construction.
- Rosemont, Minnesota, awarded to Mortenson, according to Finance and Commerce.
- Montgomery, Alabama, awarded to Hensel Phelps.
- Cheyenne Wyoming, awarded to Portland, Oregon-based Fortis Construction.
- Aiken, South Carolina (no contractor announced).
Each of those campuses represents an $800 million investment in the region, Meta claims.
In December, the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant announced a larger investment near Monroe, Louisiana. The custom-designed 4 million-square-foot campus will be Meta’s largest to date, the company said. When finished, the data center will represent over $10 billion in investment and the company anticipates over 5,000 construction workers will be on site at peak construction.
The social media giant has tapped New York City-based Turner, Redwood City, California-based DPR and Minneapolis-based Mortenson to build the multibillion-dollar project. No completion date has been announced.
Microsoft
One of the largest and most recognizable tech companies in the world has been busy on the data center front. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has announced plans to pump more than $80 billion into cloud data centers, with half of that money going to facilities in the U.S.
“AI promises to drive innovation and boost productivity in every sector of the economy,” said Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, in a Jan. 3 company blog post. “The United States is poised to stand at the forefront of this new technology wave, especially if it doubles down on its strengths and effectively partners internationally.”
The firm, which is also one of the largest investors in ChatGPT parent company OpenAI — with nearly $14 billion pumped into the company so far, according to CNBC — has jump-started its plans. It’s building a $3.3 billion data center on the site of the former Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, which it tapped Chicago-based Walsh Construction to lead.
It’s also planning to invest $1 billion on three data centers in Licking County, Ohio, according to Data Center Dynamics. Burnsville, Minnesota-based Ames Construction will build one of the three data centers, a $420 million project in New Albany, the tech firm said in a construction update blog. Two other data centers worth $1 billion in West Des Moines, Iowa, and La Porte, Indiana, are also in the works.
Oracle
While Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made news with the White House announcement unveiling the Stargate initiative on Jan. 21, he had ramped up his commitment to building massive, power-hungry data centers long before that.
The co-founder and chief technology officer of Austin, Texas-based tech giant Oracle told attendees of Oracle Cloud World 2024 in September that the firm now has 160 public and private data centers, according to Data Center Frontier.
Additionally, he told analysts the company was working on a data center requiring more than a gigawatt of electricity that would be powered by three small nuclear reactors, according to CNBC. While he didn’t reveal the exact location of the facility, he said it was in a region where permits had already been approved to build the reactors as a power source.
Those announcements followed the tech firm’s pledge from last year to spend $10 billion on data center expansion in 2025. At the time, Ellison told investors that an AI-focused data center the firm is building in Salt Lake City is so large, eight Boeing 747s would fit nose-to-tail inside it.
“We’re bringing on enormous amounts of capacity over the next 24 months,” Ellison said.
