Weekly Data Centre News - 26/06/2026
Weekly Update! This week’s update is built around one report that really puts the scale of the AI infrastructure race into perspective. According to Exponential View’s new State of the AI Economy report, the generative AI economy has already generated $110 billion in revenue over the last 12 months, with an annualised run rate now exceeding $175 billion. Perhaps even more striking, hyperscalers and neocloud providers are expected to invest around $850 billion into AI infrastructure this year, with almost $160 billion of that financed through new debt as the race to build capacity accelerates.
Those numbers explain why the headlines keep getting bigger every week. Across the globe we’re seeing fresh capital raises, new hyperscale developments, strategic partnerships, and ever-larger AI infrastructure announcements. What once felt like extraordinary news has quickly become the norm.
The AI race is no longer just about building bigger data centres, it’s about building them fast enough. And if this week’s news is anything to go by, the pace of investment shows no sign of slowing.
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Reports
The State of the AI Economy. Read here.
Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Read here.
Inside Microsoft’s two-decade push to cut water intensity while scaling for growth. Read here.
The World’s Largest Tech Companies: Memory Chips Skyrocket Amid AI Data Center Buildout. Read here.
Europe
Warehouse giant Prologis takes $16.6 billion bid for UK’s Segro public after rejection. Read here.
CoreWeave Partners With Conapto to Expand AI Cloud Capacity in Sweden Powered by Renewable Energy. Read here.
The Government has intervened in a £500m proposal to build a data centre at the historic Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, London. Read here.
Plans for a further AI data centre in Northumberland, located just miles from another site, have been submitted. Read here.
Nuclear-powered launch for Cottam data centre project (Nottinghamshire). Read here.
Britain’s biggest data centre to be powered by gas. Read here.
Prefered supplier selected for Cockenzie data centre. Read here.
AI data centre at Unilever Crosfields site clears planning hurdle. Read here.
Large new data centre planned for land near the M4 (Wales). Read here.
EdgeMode plans 300MW natural gas-powered data center campus in Toledo, Spain. Read here.
Russia Puts $2.3Bln of Data Center Projects on Hold as High Rates and Power Shortages Bite. Read here.
Cloud.ru begins construction on data center in Moscow, Russia. Read here.
60MW data center planned in Närpiö, Finland. Read here.
Bravida Finland awarded additional installation contract for XTX Markets’ data center complex in Kajaani. Read here.
KPMG Sweden and evroc create a blueprint for operational sovereignty in Europe. Read here.
evroc builds Combat Cloud together with the Swedish Armed Forces. Read here.
Google and Energy Dome Advance Multi-Continent Energy Storage Buildout with First Bilateral Project in Ireland. Read here.
Middle East & Africa
Dubai Holding could buy stake in data center firm Hscale - report. Read here.
APAC
Amazon to invest additional $13 billion in India for data centre expansion as AI race accelerates. Read here.
GS Group in talks with S.Korean government to build two 1.2 GW data centers. Read here.
Singapore-based SuperX AI eyes 1 GW data center cluster in Kazakhstan. Read here.
Blackstone plans $30bn Japan AI data centre investment. Read here.
DigitalBridge Is Said to Explore Options for AIMS Data Centre. Read here.
PLDT files to establish and float data center REIT in Philippines. Read here.
New Hunter data centre plan promises to create 250 full-time jobs. Read here.
MRCB enters data center market with 65 MW project in Bukit Jalil, Malaysia. Read here.
SIC and DC Union to build US$ 600 million data center in Cyberjaya. Read here.
True IDC invests US$ 181 million in seventh data center in Bangkok. Read here.
Firmus confirms South Australian AI factory sites, renewable energy plans due within weeks. Read here.
Australian data center firm NextDC buys 169 hectares outside Melbourne. Read here.
North America
OpenAI and Broadcom unveil LLM-optimized inference chip. Read here.
SpaceX signs computing power deal with open-source AI startup Reflection worth up to $6.3 billion. Read here.
Anthropic’s latest hiring spree reveals where it’s building AI data centers next. Read here.
Meta, Microsoft Lead $850 Billion Boom in Data Center Leases. Read here.
Qualcomm Lays Out New Data Center Roadmap For AI; Meta Buys It. Read here.
Microsoft announced one of the largest single capacity additions in their history (Pecos, Texas). Read here.
Microsoft completes construction on first datacenter facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. Read here.
Digital Realty Announces Transactions to Drive Continued Platform Growth. Read here.
Dataprana acquires two sites outside Houston, Texas, totaling 92MW. Read here.
Yondr Group and JK Land Holdings Announce Pricing of Senior Secured Notes. Read here.
Groq Raises $650M to Scale Its AI Inference Cloud Business. Read here.
Prometheus Hyperscale secures planning approval for gigawatt data center campus in Wyoming. Read here.
DataBank files for 200MW data center campus outside Atlanta, Georgia. Read here.
Chevron Strikes Power Deal With Microsoft for West Texas AI Data Center. Read here.
Proposed DeSoto County data center could be among nation’s largest. Read here.
Gigawatt-scale data center campus proposed in Kansas. Read here.
Massive AI data center proposed for Kern County’s Elk Hills. Read here.
Real estate firm Karis is potentially targeting a new data center development outside Chicago, Illinois. Read here.
Canada’s Beacon DC targets 275MW data center campus on California oil field. Read here.
NorthVault AI Unveils 43.75 MW AI Data Centre Campus in Ontario, With 4 MW Available Now. Read here.
QTS files to expand Fort Worth, Texas, data center for a third time. Read here.
Nexus DC files to develop data center in Dallas, Texas. Read here.
100MW data center could be built in Wheeling, West Virginia. Read here.
Tesla plans to sell modular AI data center hardware called ‘Megapod’. Read here.
South America
Monte Capital acquires Brazilian data centre from Apax. Read here.
Odata pushes ahead with half-billion-Dollar São Paulo data centre development. Read here.
Other interesting articles
From Bartenders To Builders: Data Centers Drive America’s Blue-Collar Comeback. Read here.
The 300-Plus Bans and Moratoriums Threatening the U.S. Data Center Boom. Read here.
Some Electricians Think Building Data Centers Is for Sellouts. Read here.
Inside Microsoft’s two-decade push to cut water intensity while scaling for growth. Read here.
America’s data-centre backlash puts the AI boom at risk. Read here.
The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation. Read here.
AI data center boom hits a human bottleneck — critical skilled labor shortages could slow deployment despite billions in funding. Read here.
Hyperscale Data plans to deploy humanoid robots at data center in Michigan. Read here.
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Have a great week.
The AI boom is not clean.
It is not sustainable.
And world leaders know it.
Behind every breakthrough model, every “innovation headline,” and every trillion-dollar valuation… there is a rapidly expanding fossil fuel machine.
Data centers are now building their own gas power plants.
Not because they want to
but because they have no choice.
The grid cannot keep up.
Renewables are too slow to scale.
And AI cannot afford to shut down.
So the solution?
Burn more gas.
51.4 gigawatts of undisclosed projects.
A surge of capacity through 2027, 2028, 2029.
This is not a side effect.
This is the foundation of the AI economy.
Every new data center locks in decades of fossil fuel dependence.
Every gigawatt ties the future of intelligence to carbon emissions.
And here is the uncomfortable truth:
The same governments promising climate action
are enabling the largest expansion of gas-powered infrastructure in decades.
This is not hypocrisy.
This is systemic failure.
Because the race for AI dominance is now overriding climate commitments.
No country wants to slow down.
No leader wants to fall behind.
So everyone keeps building.
Faster. Bigger. Dirtier.
This is how climate targets collapse
not with denial, but with justification.
If this trajectory continues:
AI will not just transform the global economy.
It will redefine global energy demand.
It will lock in emissions for decades.
And it may push climate systems closer to irreversible thresholds.
The question is no longer whether AI will reshape the world.
What kind of world will be left once it does?