North America’s Data Center Outlook
North America is experiencing an increase in data center development as artificial intelligence and traditional cloud computing demand drive record levels of investment in data center infrastructure. The regional cloud services market is projected to exceed USD 1 trillion in revenues by 2032.
The recent boom in data center construction is being driven by two major trends, generative AI and traditional cloud computing. Artificial intelligence workloads run continuously and require high-intensity computing resources. Traditional cloud computing services are user-driven, leading to fluctuating capacity needs. These cloud computing services are still driving data center growth alongside AI capacity needs.
The US, Canada, and Mexico are each progressing along distinct maturity paths in this data center infrastructure boom, influenced by differences in existing IT infrastructure, national artificial intelligence strategies and the scale of local incentives.
The US leads with 30 gigawatts (GW) of live IT infrastructure and strong policy incentives; Canada trails with 1.6GW and targeted provincial support; Mexico remains early‑stage with 0.2GW and limited national policy direction.
Wholesale colocation remains the dominant data center development model across all three markets today. In the colocation model, providers lease data center capacity to tenants in the form of rooms, entire suites, or dedicated buildings with options to customize the setup. However, hyperscalers already lead the region – with Meta, AWS, Microsoft, and Google controlling about 42% of live IT infrastructure capacity – and accelerating artificial intelligence and cloud computing demand is expected to drive a shift toward larger self‑build deployments. While artificial intelligence and traditional cloud computing workloads are the shared demand engines across the region, market development is increasingly differentiated by power availability, proximity to demand, and community opposition. Power deliverability is the greatest constraint facing all three markets and threatens to slow or stall planned data center expansion if not addressed.
Read Rabobank’s full outlook on the North America data center market.
Report Author
Payal Kaur
Energy Transition Analyst
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