Data center construction spend rises 900% in past five years as AI demand reshapes US infrastructure

Five years ago, building data centers was a healthy but unremarkable corner of the US construction market. The sector posted a 98% compounded annual growth rate from 2021 to 2025. As of April 2026, US data center construction spending reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $50.7 billion, according to ABC analysis of Census Bureau data. That figure represents a 28.1% increase year-over-year. The numbers behind the boom Year-to-date spending through October 2025 more than doubled the prior year’s figures, with full-year estimates exceeding $52 billion according to ConstructConnect data. By November 2025, year-to-date spending was up 138.6% over the same period in the previous year. Mid-point construction costs jumped from $183 per square foot in 2020 to $415 per square foot in 2025. That’s nearly 18% compounded annual growth in costs alone, driven by supply-chain pressures, labor shortages, and the sheer complexity of modern facilities that need to house thousands of high-performance GPUs drawing enormous amounts of power. In 2026, capital expenditures by the 14 largest public data center operators are projected near $750 billion, with the majority of that capacity located in t...