America's
Data Center
Explosion

1,440 data center facilities across the United States as of 2026. Who is building them, where they are going, and what communities are doing.

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Currently Active

The Grid That Already Exists

529 data centers are already operating across the country, powering the infrastructure behind cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and everyday digital services.

Breaking Ground

Under Construction

119 more are under construction right now. The build-out is accelerating.

On the Drawing Board

Proposed

649 more have been proposed. If they are built as planned, the number of facilities in the US would nearly double.

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Operating
0
Under Construction
0
Proposed
Operating
Under Construction
Proposed
Operating Building Proposed

Click any state bar to view that state. Hover over dots for details.

Who is building them

The six largest operators ranked by total facility count, including everything proposed. For most of them, the majority of what they have staked out has not been built yet.

Amazon / AWS
0
facilities
Operator · 75 facilities

Amazon / AWS

Amazon appears under two names in the data, “Amazon” and “Amazon Data Services Inc.” Combined, they account for 75 facilities, with 51 located in Virginia. Of these, 42 are proposed, meaning Amazon has nearly twice as much planned capacity as it currently operates. An $11 billion campus in Georgia is under construction, and a proposed $20 billion, 960 MW campus in Pennsylvania is planned next to the Susquehanna Nuclear Plant.

23 operating 6 building 42 proposed
Operator · 54 facilities

Microsoft

Microsoft has one of the largest operator footprints in the dataset, with 48 facilities listed under its name and 6 more under “Microsoft Corporation.” However, only 13 are currently operating, while 33 are still proposed. These reflect long-term land claims and power agreements made years ahead of construction, with Virginia, Georgia, and Texas as the primary targets.

13 operating 6 building 33 proposed
Operator · 33 facilities

Google

Google has 10 operating, 5 under construction, and 16 more proposed. A 3:1 pipeline ratio. The $2 billion Project Zodiac in Indiana is under construction. A $3 billion campus in Milan County, Texas is proposed. Google also appears as a tenant in 8 additional facilities operated by others, making its real footprint larger than the operator count shows.

10 operating 5 building 16 proposed
Operator · 19 facilities

Meta

Meta currently has 8 facilities simultaneously under construction, more than any other company in the dataset. The $15 billion Hobart, Indiana campus at 2,400 MW is the largest active build in the data. The Louisiana facility, powered by 3 dedicated natural gas plants at up to 2,200 MW, is reported to be one of the largest data center projects underway. Only 2 more are in the proposed stage.

9 operating 8 building 2 proposed
Operator · 16 facilities

STACK Infrastructure

STACK Infrastructure operates 12 facilities, all in Virginia, all in Loudoun County. One of the more geographically concentrated operators in the dataset. Unlike the hyperscalers expanding nationally, STACK has made a single massive bet on Northern Virginia's power infrastructure and existing fiber density. 4 more are proposed in the same corridor.

12 operating 4 proposed
Operator · 16 facilities

Digital Realty

Digital Realty is one of the oldest colocation operators in the dataset. 12 of its 16 facilities are already operating. Unlike the hyperscalers building for their own workloads, Digital Realty leases space to tenants including cloud providers. It concentrates heavily in Virginia and Georgia, where it appears in some records as a tenant of its own facilities.

12 operating 1 building 3 proposed
The national picture

Each dot below is a county with at least one data center, plotted by its median household income. The dashed line marks the US county median of $66,062. Most dots fall to the right of it. On its own, this suggests the industry tends to land in well-off places.

$76,804
avg income in data center counties
vs $66,062 national average, a difference of $10,741
$178,707
Loudoun County, VA
Richest and most facility-dense county. 187 facilities.
$36,259
Coahoma County, MS
The lowest-income county in the dataset with a data center. Median income nearly $30,000 below the US average.

But the national view does not show the whole picture. Select a state below and compare the two maps side by side. The counties with the most data centers are almost never the highest-income counties in that state. The industry lands in wealthy regions, but it picks the cheaper ground within them.

The within-state picture

Select a state and use the metric buttons to switch views. The left map shows data center density relative to that state. The right map shows median household income on a national scale. Hover any county to see figures for both maps at once.

Data Center Density
Median Household Income
What the data tells us

The scatter plot shows that data center counties tend to sit above the national income median of $66,062. But the pattern becomes clearer when comparing counties within individual states across both panels. The densest data center locations are not necessarily the richest counties. Instead, they tend to be places where infrastructure capacity, power access, and available land overlap within already economically strong regions.

Looking across states, a consistent pattern emerges: data centers are not concentrated in the wealthiest counties. Instead, they cluster in more affordable counties within high-income regions. The numbers reflect this shift. Counties where facilities already operate average $79,771 in median income, while counties with only proposed facilities average $76,341. That $3,430 gap widens further in the pipeline. In the 42 counties where proposed facilities outnumber operating ones by three to one, median income drops to $64,691, below the national average.

Communities fighting back: 171 documented cases

Looking across the cases in FracTracker, the sequence tends to follow a similar path. A community learns about a proposed facility through a news report or a planning board notice, often well after permits have been filed. Residents organize, start a petition, attend public meetings, and ask questions about water use and power capacity. In most documented cases, the project moves forward regardless. The 77 active petitions and 78 named advocacy groups in this dataset represent real, organized resistance. Most of it is happening without lawyers, without access to environmental assessments, and without awareness of what other communities went through in the same situation.

What connects these cases is not which state they are in or which company is involved. It is the timing. By the time a community is organized enough to mount real opposition, the land has often already been rezoned, the power agreements signed, and the permitting process well underway. The public meeting comes last.

The nine cases below are the most thoroughly documented in the FracTracker database. Each card tells what happened. Hover to read. Eight of them follow the same arc. ONE DOES NOT.

One case in the grid below ended differently. In Adairsville, Georgia, a sustained community campaign against Project Springbank ended with the developer pulling the application entirely. No permit was issued. No facility was built. It is one of the very few cases in the full FracTracker database where organized opposition led directly to a project being stopped. It sits at the center of the grid below not as an exception to dismiss, but as a proof of concept.

Bessemer, AL
Project Marvel · $14 billion
The mayor, city attorney, and other officials signed NDAs with the developer before any public vote. The community group "Bessemer Data Center: We Say No!" organized. In November 2025 the city council approved rezoning 700 acres anyway. A second rezoning for 900 more acres followed in January 2026.
Data Center Dynamics AL.com WBRC News
Santa Teresa, NM
Project Jupiter · $165 billion · Oracle
One of the largest single data center investment announcements in recent years. The project is reported to use 10 million gallons of water per year. Residents raised transparency concerns at a September 2025 public meeting. The county approved the project and construction is underway.
El Paso Matters Bloomberg Lawsuit filed
Memphis, TN
xAI Colossus · xAI
Operating on unpermitted natural gas turbines in a majority-Black neighborhood in South Memphis. A coalition of environmental justice and civil rights groups has sustained organized opposition. The facility has been reported to be expanding while permit questions remain unresolved.
Southern Env. Law Center Data Center Dynamics
Homer City, PA
Homer City Energy Campus · $10 billion
Built on the site of a shuttered coal plant. In December 2025 the Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, and PennFuture filed an appeal of the development permit with the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board. At 4,500 MW, this would be a large-scale energy campus.
Data Center Dynamics Indiana Gazette
Adairsville, GA
Project Springbank
A community-led campaign in Adairsville raised sustained opposition to Project Springbank. The developer subsequently withdrew the application. This is one of the relatively few cases in the dataset where a project was withdrawn following organized community opposition.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution AJC
Page, AZ
Page Data Center · Huntley LLC
Plans to draw power from Glen Canyon Dam, a water-stressed reservoir already under pressure. In October 2025 the city council voted 5 to 2 to approve 500 acres for sale and rezoning. In December 2026 citizens filed a referendum to veto the council vote.
Data Center Dynamics FOX 10 Phoenix
Davis, WV
Ridgeline Power Station · Fundamental Data
A proposed data center paired with a new natural gas plant in Tucker County. Residents rallied in sustained opposition, including a petition targeting a West Virginia microgrid bill that would enable the project. Environmental groups filed a challenge to the air quality permit.
WV Metro News WV Watch
Imperial, CA
Imperial Data Center · $10 billion · Google
The City of Imperial filed a lawsuit against the county permitting authority after residents organized under "Not In My Back Yard Imperial." A community protest was held in January 2026. The facility is Google-linked and includes an 862 MWh battery energy storage system.
Data Center Dynamics
Edgecombe County, NC
Kingsboro Data Center · $19 billion
A community meeting was held in November 2025 on the proposed 900 MW, $19 billion Kingsboro AI data center. Concerns centered on environmental impact and utility rate increases for a rural county with limited resources to absorb a hyperscale campus.
WFAE WUNC Sound Rivers
What the data shows and what is missing
Unknown size (no data disclosed)
848
Hyperscale (100–999 MW)
284
Mega campus (>1,000 MW)
83
Medium (11–50 MW)
99
Small (0–10 MW)
95

848 of 1,440 facilities, or 59%, have no size data in the FracTracker database. Companies are not required to disclose this publicly.

Facility size unknown
59%
Power source unknown
95%
Cooling type unknown
97%
Community pushback unknown
87%
Project cost unknown
85%
Water use unknown
98%

After working through these gaps, one thing became clear. More detailed versions of this information do exist in commercial datasets. Facility sizes, power consumption figures, water use agreements, and cooling system details are often recorded in full elsewhere, but they are not freely accessible. Instead, they sit behind commercial data platforms that require expensive licenses, sometimes costing thousands of dollars per year. These datasets are commonly used by investors and industry analysts, while regulators, journalists, and nearby communities often rely on incomplete public records.

The question the gaps raise is not complicated. If 98% of water use data and 95% of power source data are missing from the public record, and the detailed versions of that information are available behind commercial licenses, who exactly is this information being withheld from? The industry knows. The data brokers know. The communities most directly affected often do not.

Data sources

Facility data: FracTracker Alliance Data Centers Database (2026). 1,440 facilities with operator, status, location, cost, community pushback, and source URL fields. Available at fractracker.org/data/data-centers/

Income data: Median household income by county, 2019–2023 ACS 5-year estimates via HDPulse (National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov).

County boundaries: US Census Bureau county shapefiles via us-atlas@3 (topojson/us-atlas on npm). FIPS codes used for income matching.

This project is for informational purposes only and is intended to provide insight rather than make definitive claims. All figures are drawn directly from the sources listed above. Data reflects conditions as of early 2026. Interpretations are based on observed patterns in the data and should not be treated as conclusive findings.