AI Data Centers Are Driving a U.S. Power Boom

The U.S. has built data centers for decades, but Business Insider reports that development has accelerated as AI increases demand for computing power. The projects highlighted in the report have broken ground and each has at least 1 gigawatt of capacity, underscoring how large AI infrastructure is becoming.

The scale is significant: 1 gigawatt of electricity supplied continuously for a year could power roughly 835,000 average American homes. That makes planned capacity a useful public proxy for the computing load these campuses may support.

Among the largest projects cited is a city-sized campus in Texas pursuing up to 17 gigawatts of power capacity. Another project in Ohio is aiming for up to 10 gigawatts of data-center capacity, with most of it contracted for OpenAI use.

Business Insider also identifies Oracle, SB Energy, SpaceX, Google, and Meta among leading developers and operators. Meta projects highlighted in the provided article include data centers in Lebanon, Indiana, and El Paso, Texas, each planned around 1 gigawatt of capacity.

U.S. data centers accounted for nearly 40% of global data-center electricity use in 2025, consuming about 313 terawatt-hours, according to data cited from the Energy Institute’s 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy. Business Insider notes that this was more electricity than Australia used that year.

The article also cites a Berkeley Lab projection that data centers will consume 11.8% of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from about 4.4% in 2023. The key takeaway for readers: the electricity and water needed for servers and cooling systems can have major implications for local grids and sustainability planning.

Business Insider reports that Pew Research Center data shows the U.S. has more than 3,000 operating data centers and over 1,500 more under development, mostly in rural areas. As projects expand, some residents in places such as Texas and Utah have raised concerns about noise, property values, and community impacts.

New York has temporarily paused construction of new large-scale AI data centers, reflecting the policy questions emerging around this buildout. Meanwhile, demand remains intense enough that SpaceX is offering employees pay bumps to temporarily move to data-center sites and help with construction.