Dan Ives predicts midterm results could derail some AI data center plans

The Wedbush veteran turned Yorkville Ives & Co. analyst says up to 100 planned US data centers may never get built after Democrats swept Congress and won Texas Dan Ives has spent years as one of Wall Street’s loudest AI cheerleaders. Now he’s flagging a speed bump, and it came from the ballot box. Ives expects the November 4, 2026 midterm results to slow AI data center construction across the US. He also expects the peak in Big Tech’s capital spending growth to arrive sooner, in 2027. What changed on election night Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in the midterms. In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Ives, an analyst at Yorkville Ives & Co., did not mince words about the outcome. He called it a “seismic shift” for US AI infrastructure. His estimate is specific. He believes 5% to 10% of the 800 to 1,000 new data centers planned in the US may not be built as expected. That works out to approximately 40 to 100 facilities. Ives ties the slowdown to heavier regulatory scrutiny and political resistance. Those facilities were meant to serve demand from generative AI workloads, the computing muscle behind chatbo...