Data Center Spending in US

The good folks at “Our World in Data” have been putting together a data series which shows monthly spending on the “on-site work to build data centers each month, including materials and construction labor. It excludes the cost of IT hardware like servers and storage, which can account for a large share of total investment.” Here’s the just-updated figure: There’s an upward trend from about 2014, but the big rise kicks in around early 2023. At least as of the most recent data on this graph, for June 2026, there is no sign of the rise slowing down. Again, these are monthly figures, so on current trends, it’s plausible that just on-site construction spending for data centers will total $40 billion or more in 2026. I’m of course aware that there is a degree of political pushback against building data centers, which the figure suggests isn’t having a dramatic effect, and which I think is largely misguided. Sure, there should be limits on where such centers can be built. But when I go on…