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Build-out intelligence

The U.S. AI data center build-out, tracked and sourced.

A public view of the research behind Spezia's build-out dataset: the market, active projects by state and stage, and how a job runs. Every figure links to a published source. The full dataset, with who is paying, building and supplying every project, is in Spezia Team.

01The market

Record spending, record-low vacancy, and a hard limit on power and people.

Figures as of November 2026.

  • U.S. private data center construction reached a record annual rate of about $96.5B in September 2026, up about 90% from a year earlier (preliminary Census data).[1] It first passed $50B in April 2026.[2]
  • Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft plan roughly $700B to $830B of 2026 capital spending, and each raised or held its outlook.[3,4]
  • North American data center vacancy hit a record low of 1.4% in the first half of 2026, with a record amount under construction.[5,6]
  • Electricians are the most-cited shortage on data center builds, with pipefitters second; labor shortages are delaying projects.[8,9]
  • Build cost is about $11.3M per MW for shell and core (JLL) and $8.9M to $23.3M per MW all-in (Cushman & Wakefield), up about 21% since late 2024.[24,25]
  • Published breakdowns put electrical at roughly 40% to 50% of build cost and mechanical at roughly 15% to 20%.[26,27]
  • Many 2026 projects are delayed, mostly by power, equipment and approvals; trackers show more delays than outright cancellations, and the "half canceled" claim is disputed.[10,11,12]
  • JLL found 57% of data center projects were delayed at least three months in 2025.[16]
02Market

We track the build-out, job by job.

Our research follows U.S. data center projects from announcement through construction, using public approvals, filings and news.

Updated Nov 9, 2026
Projects tracked
1,047
Approved or under construction
408
Capacity on active jobs
204.6 GW
States with active jobs
41

Active jobs by state

Top 10
  • TX84
  • VA25
  • IN20
  • MS15
  • CO14
  • ND14
  • WY13
  • GA12
  • LA12
  • OH12

Projects by stage

  • Announced343
  • Approved118
  • Under construction290
  • Operational91
  • Blocked or paused27

Counts are projects found in our latest research run from public sources, not every project in the market.

Active jobs by state084
Alabama: 11 active jobsAlaska: 0 active jobsArizona: 4 active jobsColorado: 14 active jobsFlorida: 5 active jobsGeorgia: 12 active jobsIndiana: 20 active jobsKansas: 1 active jobMaine: 0 active jobsMassachusetts: 0 active jobsMinnesota: 8 active jobsNew Jersey: 7 active jobsNorth Carolina: 4 active jobsNorth Dakota: 14 active jobsOklahoma: 9 active jobsPennsylvania: 9 active jobsSouth Dakota: 3 active jobsTexas: 84 active jobsWyoming: 13 active jobsConnecticut: 0 active jobsMissouri: 10 active jobsWest Virginia: 5 active jobsIllinois: 6 active jobsNew Mexico: 7 active jobsArkansas: 8 active jobsCalifornia: 5 active jobsDelaware: 0 active jobsDistrict of Columbia: 0 active jobsHawaii: 0 active jobsIowa: 3 active jobsKentucky: 11 active jobsMaryland: 3 active jobsMichigan: 3 active jobsMississippi: 15 active jobsMontana: 1 active jobNew Hampshire: 0 active jobsNew York: 3 active jobsOhio: 12 active jobsOregon: 6 active jobsTennessee: 6 active jobsUtah: 8 active jobsVirginia: 25 active jobsWashington: 5 active jobsWisconsin: 11 active jobsNebraska: 1 active jobSouth Carolina: 6 active jobsIdaho: 7 active jobsNevada: 11 active jobsVermont: 0 active jobsLouisiana: 12 active jobsRhode Island: 0 active jobs
Approved or under construction, from our latest research run. Hover a state for its count.
Busiest states
  1. 01Texas84
  2. 02Virginia25
  3. 03Indiana20
  4. 04Mississippi15
  5. 05Colorado14

Counts are projects found in public sources, not every project in the market. Large campuses count once however many buildings they include.

03How a job runs

Six stages from land to turnover.

Published estimates run from about 18 to 30 months end to end where approvals are quick, to 4 to 7 years where they are not.[17,19,18]

  1. 01

    Site and power

    Owner or developer, utility, grid operator

    Land, grid capacity, water and cooling decide whether a site works at all; power is often the binding constraint, and some teams turn to on-site generation.[17,20]

  2. 02

    Entitlements and permits

    Developer, county and state agencies, residents

    Approvals run across federal, state and local agencies; zoning and environmental reviews are common causes of delay.[18,17]

  3. 03

    Design and procurement

    Owner, design engineers, general contractor, vendors

    Engineering covers power distribution, cooling and redundancy.[17] Long-lead gear such as large transformers has been reported at around 36 months.[7]

  4. 04

    Construction

    General contractor, electrical, mechanical and other trades

    Site work, utilities and the electrical and mechanical systems.[17] Electricians are the most-cited labor shortage, with pipefitters next.[8] Changes arrive through verbal directives and unacknowledged notices, and owners push acceleration to hit lease milestones.[13]

  5. 05

    Commissioning

    Commissioning agent, trades, owner operations

    Commissioning runs from factory checks (L1) to integrated systems testing (L5), and guides recommend running it alongside construction rather than at the end.[21,22,17]

  6. 06

    Turnover and operations

    Owner operations, facilities contractors

    Continuous monitoring, maintenance and compliance after commissioning.[17]

04Commissioning

Commissioning levels, L1 to L5.

Each project's specification sets the exact definitions; these are the common meanings.[21,22,23]

  • L1Factory and component checksFactory acceptance tests, certifications and documents before equipment ships.
  • L2Installation checksCabling, piping, torque, terminations, earthing and labeling against the drawings.
  • L3Start-upEach device (UPS, generator, pump, CRAH) energized and checked on its own, with alarms and control points.
  • L4Functional performanceWhole systems and control sequences tested in normal and failure modes, such as utility loss to generator to UPS.
  • L5Integrated systems testThe full facility tested as one system under simulated failures; may include load banks and heat load.
05Where change work comes from

Why extra work on data center jobs goes unbilled.

What construction claims practitioners report on these projects.

  • 01Owner and GC direction given verbally and never turned into a formal change order, plus change notices nobody acknowledges.[13]
  • 02Acceleration to hit tenant lease milestones, bringing overtime, extra shifts and compressed commissioning.[13]
  • 03Money spent to recover from delays caused by others is usually recoverable only if it was agreed in advance.[14]
  • 04Constructive acceleration: owners refuse time extensions, so trades speed up at their own cost.[15]
  • 05Scope ambiguity, incomplete design documents and tenant-driven changes produce contested change orders.[13]
  • 06Mixed-up job-cost records make recovery harder.[13]
Sources

Gathered November 8, 2026. Reports from secondary outlets are marked; check the primary report before relying on a figure.

  1. 1US Data Center Construction Hit a Record $96.5B Rate · FourWeekMBA, citing U.S. Census Bureau (secondary)
  2. 2US Construction Spending on Data Centers Eclipses $50 Billion · Bloomberg Government
  3. 3AI hyperscalers are expected to finish the year spending $828 billion on capex · Hargreaves Lansdown
  4. 4Hyperscalers Hit $700 Billion in 2026 AI Spending Plans · Yahoo Finance
  5. 5North American data center demand continues to outpace supply despite record construction · CBRE
  6. 6Data center vacancy at an all-time low as construction hits a record · Construction Dive
  7. 7Hyperscaler capex and the power crunch · Datacentres.com market note (unverified against primary data)
  8. 8Labor crunch tests growth limits for data center builders · Staffing Industry Analysts
  9. 9Data center workforce shortage: 340,000 unfilled positions · Introl (secondary, cites ABC, AGC/NCCER and Fortune)
  10. 10Global AI data center boom hits delays · Axios
  11. 11Stop saying half of 2026 US datacenter capacity is canceled · SemiAnalysis
  12. 12FT: 47 large US data center projects delayed, withdrawn or blocked in 2026 · AI Weekly, citing the Financial Times (secondary)
  13. 13Managing dispute risk in data center construction · StoneTurn
  14. 14Data centre delay claims, part 2 · Fenwick Elliott
  15. 15Does your cloud have a silver lining? Top ten legal issues on data center projects · Stoel Rives
  16. 16Built but not ready: construction claims in the data center boom · Wood, Smith, Henning & Berman (cites JLL)
  17. 17From Permit to Power-On: How Data Centers Actually Get Built · Global Data Center Hub
  18. 18From dirt to data: the full life-cycle playbook for data center permitting · SWCA
  19. 19Data center construction timeline · Opendock
  20. 20Gridlocked: how power constraints are shaping the future of data centers · Data Center Knowledge
  21. 21Data center commissioning levels · Archdesk
  22. 22How to build a Level 1 to Level 5 Cx test plan · CxPlanner
  23. 23Commissioning data centers · IPS
  24. 24Data centre construction costs rise to $11.3M per MW in 2026 · Datacentres.com, citing JLL (secondary)
  25. 25Cushman & Wakefield 2026 data center development cost guide: 21% rise in per-MW costs · IREI
  26. 26Data center power and electrical infrastructure statistics 2026 · ULE Group (vendor blog)
  27. 27What a data center actually costs · Global Data Center Hub

Get the full build-out dataset.

1,000+ projects with the map, power, demand by quarter, and who is paying, building and supplying each one. Included in Spezia Team.

See Team On a job? See the review