Data Center Construction Continues to Climb
- The following figures are seasonally adjusted annualized rates of construction spending. The Census Bureau tracks the “value of construction put in place” to measure the amount spent on different types of buildings and structures during a given period.
- For the month of June 2026, there was $68.30 billion spent on the construction of data centers, which was the seventh consecutive month in which this measure hit a new all-time high.
- For the first time, the amount spent on constructing data centers was larger than the amount spent on amusement & entertainment, automobile, food/beverage, and multi-retail buildings, which combined for $64.70 billion.
Evidence of Strong Upward Revisions
- In its reports, the Census Bureau revises data for the previous two months. In addition, it revises the prior 88 months when it releases the data for May, which is typically released in July.
- These recent revisions illustrate the speed at which the data center buildout is occuring. For example, spending on data center construction in April 2026 was initially set at $50.71 billion. The annual revision bumped that figure up to $58.98 billion. The most recently published report has the figure for April 2026 at $61.86 billion, over $11 billion higher than the initial announcement.
Data Centers Accounted for Nearly 10% of Nonresidential Private Construction
- The amount spent on data center construction was 9.16% of the total spent on private nonresidential construction projects in June 2026. This share was 2.13% in November 2022, the month in which ChatGPT was released to the public.
Total Returns for Data Center REITs
- Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, two of the largest REITs that focus on data centers, had year-to-date returns of 35.25% and 25.56%, respectively.
Investment Flows into Computer Equipment to Fill the Newly Built Data Centers
- The year-over-year change of private investment into data centers peaked at 75.50% in Q4 2023, and has since trended downward to 22.07% in Q2 2026.
- Fixed investment into computers and peripheral equipment, which includes items such as server racks and chips used in data centers, peaked at a YoY change of 74.81% in Q4 2025. It was a YoY increase of 60.15% in Q2 2026.
News Coverage Follows Rising Investments
- There were 57,678 news stories that mentioned data centers in July 2026, according to Bloomberg News Trends. This was a new high in the number of stories covering the buildings needed for the AI buildout.
