The global data center market continued its rapid expansion in September 2026, driven by rising demand for AI, cloud computing, and high-performance computing. The month saw gigawatt-scale campus announcements, major construction milestones, multibillion-dollar financing deals, and power-focused developments across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.

Notable new data center project developments included Anthropic's 1.44 GW Western Downs campus in Australia, CX Tech's 1 GW Chapelcross campus in Scotland, Crusoe's USD 4.8 billion Project Hyper in Texas, and CDC's 1.4 GW Wagga Wagga campus in Australia. At the same time, regulators in several markets introduced tighter controls on data center development, grid access, energy use, and permitting.

List of Major North America Data Center Projects, Policy and Investments - September 2026

West Texas set the pace for North American AI data center infrastructure this period, with filings and customer reveals clustered around Crusoe's campuses. Elsewhere, developers announced gigawatt-scale plans in Pennsylvania, Saskatchewan and Utah. Regulators moved the other way, with Texas pausing new permits and several Virginia jurisdictions tightening rules.

Crusoe filed for a USD 4.8 billion campus in Jayton, Texas, with two data centers that appear to connect to its Childress project. The two sites together point to roughly USD 12 billion and about 1.4 GW. Crusoe also named itself as developer of Google's campus in Armstrong County, near Amarillo. Crusoe also raised USD 3.9 billion for its build-out, with Nvidia among the new investors.

Anthropic was reportedly behind one of the period's largest compute commitments. A report on Sept. 1 said it had signed a roughly USD 35 billion cloud agreement with Lambda for a data center in Nueces County, Texas. That figure is a reported contract value rather than construction spend, and it is unconfirmed. Separately, Lambda plans a data center outside Tulsa, near Google's campus there.

Beyond Texas, three large projects stood out:

• Aligned broke ground on a gigawatt-scale campus in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on September 17.

• Bell plans to add 900 MW to its planned Saskatchewan campus, with scope for further expansion.

• Valar Atomics proposed Project Beehive, a 9.4 GW campus powered by small modular reactors on public land in Utah. NPR reported 9.6 GW, and the first reactor is targeted for 2028. This one is highly speculative.

Construction and filing activity remained steady across providers:

• Applied Digital revealed a USD 3.2 billion data center in Alabama, called Delta Forge 2, with operations possible by 2028. It also completed a second building at its Ellendale, North Dakota campus, adding 75 MW and bringing the campus to 250 MW.

• Meta's USD 1.2 billion Kuna, Idaho data center went live on September 4, its second AI-optimized facility. The company also announced its fourth expansion at its Eagle Mountain, Utah campus.

• Microsoft filed for two-building campuses in Union City, Georgia and Prince William County, Virginia.

• Digital Realty is pursuing a campus in Kokomo, Indiana. The mayor put the cost at USD 1.4 to USD 1.7 billion, and operations are targeted for 2033. The company has not disclosed a figure.

• Thor Equities submitted plans for a 150 MW data center in Georgia, at an estimated cost of USD 1 billion.

• Edged topped out two buildings at its 200 MW Council Bluffs, Iowa campus.

• Skybox and Prologis filed for a fourth data center in Hutto, Texas, set to be the largest at the campus.

• Digital Realty, Colovore, Hut 8, CoreSite and DataBank filed to build in Texas. Colovore also filed in Fort Worth.

• Blackstart Digital is acquiring IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.

• Canada and Mexico also saw large plans. Algoma Steel and Red Jar Energy Partners proposed a 400 MW AI data center in Ontario. Cuasar Capital and KA URBE IT announced a 300 MW campus in Durango, Mexico.

Capital kept flowing to developers, and some projects hit trouble:

• Vantage raised USD 2 billion for early-stage North American development.

• Serverfarm expanded its development fund to USD 3.89 billion.

• Nebius signed a 50 MW lease with AIB Data Centers at a site in the southeastern US.

• Oracle reportedly issued a force majeure notice to Blue Owl over Project Jupiter, the 2.5 GW New Mexico campus due online in 2028. Blue Owl says its financial commitments are unchanged.

 Policy and public process moved quickly alongside the buildout. Several states and localities tightened rules or added restrictions: 

• Texas: Gov. Greg Abbott halted new data center permits pending an ERCOT audit, which ERCOT expects to complete by December.

• Virginia: Loudoun County's board voted to pause new data center applications for 12 months. Prince William County cut its by-right overlay district for digital infrastructure by two-thirds. Gov. Abigail Spanberger's new digital infrastructure framework bans data center NDAs.

• California: The governor signed a seven-bill package targeting data center energy and water use and shielding ratepayers from buildout costs.

• Oregon: Gov. Tina Kotek froze sales of state-owned land for data center projects through July 1, 2027.

• Federal: Senate Democrats blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act in a 57-43 vote on October 1.

List of Major South America Data Center Projects, Policy and Investments - September 2026

South America’s significant developments were Google's plan to double its Brazilian cloud capacity by 2030 and Brazil's ReData incentive law, which should unlock more hyperscale development. The rest was smaller regional expansion in Brazil and Ecuador.

Google Cloud said it will double its computing capacity in Brazil through 2030. The expansion covers new data centers and the arrival of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs in the country. Google did not disclose an investment figure or MW capacity. Executives described the plan as matching, in four years, what took nine to build.

The policy change that matters most is the ReData data center bill. The Brazilian Senate approved it on September 3, and it went to the president without needing a new House vote. President Lula then signed it into law.

Developer activity centered on Brazil, with one Ecuador opening:

• Yamna signed a land reservation agreement at Brazil's Port of Açu. The company plans to develop hyperscale data centers in Brazil.

• Eveo plans a Tier III data center in Recife. It adds to Eveo's sites in Fortaleza, São Paulo and Curitiba.

• Telconet opened a data center in Guayaquil, Ecuador, its third in the country, and is targeting another in Quito.

• OData will deploy Aligned's DeltaFlow liquid cooling system at its data centers in Brazil and Mexico.

List of Major Middle East Data Center Projects, Policy and Investments - September 2026

Saudi Arabia led the Middle East this period, with construction starting on the Oxagon campus in NEOM and AWS committing capacity in the Kingdom. Microsoft also pledged USD 10 billion across four Gulf states. The rest of the region saw smaller leasing and capacity-target announcements, and no new gigawatt-scale campus was filed. A report on AWS data centers hit by Iran strikes was the region's main risk story.

Humain broke ground on NEOM's Oxagon data center, a campus in the floating hexagonal industrial district that is targeting 1.5 GW. NEOM's release describes a 360 MW first phase with HUMAIN co-developing 100 MW of it alongside DataVolt.

AWS and Humain committed to bringing 50 MW online at their Saudi AI Zone by 2028, and AWS is on track to launch a cloud region there in December 2026. On September 24, Microsoft said it will invest USD 10 billion in the Gulf by 2030.

Smaller capacity announcements rounded out the region:

• Meeza signed an 8 MW lease with a global hyperscaler in Qatar on September 8, the largest contract in the company's history.

• O-Green said on September 21 that it is targeting 200 MW of data center capacity in Oman by 2028.

List of Major Africa Region Data Center Projects, Policy and Investments - September 2026

Egypt led African data center activity, with Intro Group committing USD 270 million to the first phase of the Kemet Data Center. Kenya and South Africa gained new capacity, and West Africa saw new builds in Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

Intro Group will invest USD 270 million in the 80 MW Kemet Data Center in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, Sokhna, with development in two phases. USD 270 million covers phase one. A 2024 memorandum of understanding valued the full project at USD 450 million. 

On September 23, Egypt's ICT minister reviewed implementation plans with Intro Group. Engineering designs are complete and supplier contracts are signed. Sterling and Wilson is the engineering, procurement and construction partner under a memorandum of understanding, and the facility is targeting Tier III.

On September 14, Heca Data announced plans for an integrated zone for hyperscale data centers in Egypt. A delegation led by the company's CEO voiced interest in strengthening cooperation with the Egyptian government.

East and Southern Africa gained new capacity:

• On September 8, Digital Realty launched a 6.4 MW data center in Nairobi, Kenya, as iColo joined the Digital Realty brand.

• On October 5, Continent 8 Technologies launched a data center in Johannesburg, South Africa, marking the company's entrance into Africa.

West Africa saw two new builds:

• On September 9, Ivory Coast announced it is targeting a 2027 launch for its first state-owned data center, backed by the US Export-Import Bank.

• On September 15, Digital Parks Africa announced its entry into Nigeria with a planned data center in Lagos, its first in West Africa. The company's existing facility has won deals to host Bull and Nvidia hardware. 

List of Major Europe Data Center Projects, Policy and Investments - September 2026

Europe produced the period's largest single investment figure, Google's EUR 13 billion (approximately USD 14.9 billion) Finland commitment, and two major campus filings in CX Tech's 1 GW Chapelcross plan in Scotland and the Moncalieri campus in Italy. Finland drew the most project activity, while Spain, Poland and Germany added hyperscale and AI builds. Regulation tightened at the same time, as Scotland's parliament backed a de facto moratorium on large data centers and Finland moved to rewrite its grid connection queue.

Large campuses and investment commitments

CX Tech filed plans for a 1 GW data center campus at the former Chapelcross nuclear plant near Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The investment is GBP 16.5 billion (approximately USD 21.8 billion). The planning-permission-in-principle application covers eight buildings of about 120 MW each across 162,000 square meters, with direct-wire connections to renewable projects and a 132 kV grid supply point next to the site. 

Google pledged EUR 13 billion (approximately USD 14.9 billion) in digital infrastructure investment in Finland over two years. The same day, Google signed its first nuclear power purchase agreement outside the United States, with Fortum in Loviisa. The investment is a program-level commitment rather than a single site.

Moncalieri Logistics submitted plans for what could be Italy's largest data center, on the former ILTE site in Moncalieri, Piedmont. Local reports dated September 16 and 17 describe four new buildings on 270,000 square meters, with about 384 MW of IT load and 576 MW of total electrical demand. The project is expected to create about 500 jobs.

Nabiax broke ground on ADC3 in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, a 100 MW facility phased through 2029. The investment is approximately EUR 800 million (approximately USD 918 million). The build takes Nabiax to 135 MW of capacity in Spain across Madrid and Catalonia.

Energa Obrót signed a letter of intent for a 100 MW data center in Konin, Poland. Central Energy Group's total investment in the project is estimated at just under EUR 3 billion (approximately USD 3.4 billion).

Hscale secured a USD 1 billion contract with a hyperscaler for data centers in Spain, providing capacity for cloud and AI workloads. On September 7, Greenfield and Finsbury Infrastructure announced EUR 360 million (approximately USD 413 million) of investment in a Milan data center that has already secured 80 MW of power.

Finland and the Nordics

atNorth announced a 75 MW data center in Salo, Finland. The first phase goes live in 2028, with potential expansion to 230 MW. On September 2, Cerebras started construction on a 165 MW data center in Mikkeli, Finland, with the first 50 MW underway.

Enetron Park announced zoning approval for a 250 MW data center in Pyhäjoki, Finland, a decision at odds with the local government's denial. On September 21, Valorem added data center projects in Savonlinna and Kankaanpää to its Finnish pipeline.

Asp Data Center secured NOK 1.6 billion (approximately USD 160 million) to fund its Stavanger, Norway project, refinancing a previous agreement. On September 29, Lefdal Mine acquired a second development site in Vestland County, Norway. On September 17, Magnora joined a venture with Sunly for an Estonia data center project.

United Kingdom and Ireland

AWS was granted planning permission for a data center campus at the Ridgeway Distribution Centre in Iver, Buckinghamshire, replacing the existing distribution center. On October 5, plans emerged for a data center campus at the former Fawley Power Station outside Southampton.

Further UK activity:

• Pure started work on a second building at its Brent Cross campus in London, with B2 offering 70 MW.

• Civo announced an 8 MW Edge data center for AI in Hertfordshire, scaling to 38 MW, the first of 40 planned sites.

• The former film studio project in High Wycombe received planning approval, subject to conditions.

• DataVita filed for a third data center at its North Lanarkshire, Scotland campus, with revised plans after resident consultation.

• Green Mountain secured a neocloud customer for 14 MW at its LON-East campus in London.

• Virtus secured GBP 2.45 billion (approximately USD 3.2 billion) in financing for data center build-out in the UK and mainland Europe.

Google received planning permission to expand its data center in Dublin, Ireland, following approval from An Coimisiún Pleanála.

Germany, Poland and Central Europe

• Plans progressed for a 200 MW data center in Schladen-Werla, Lower Saxony, led by Green Datacenter Development.

• A local council approved a data center in Gießen, near Frankfurt, with a connected load of up to 65 MW.

• NorthC broke ground on a 6 MW data center in Frankfurt, due live in 2028. On September 2, Telehouse added Building N, 5.4 MW, to its Frankfurt campus.

• Polcom announced a 40 MW data center in Skawina, Poland, its second in the town.

• Poland's National Data Processing Center received a PLN 1.56 billion (USD 401 million) EU grant from the European Funds for Digital Development program.

• S+B Gruppe secured planning permission for a 12 MW data center in Bucharest, Romania.

• Polarise agreed to lease 15 MW at an upcoming CRA facility in Prague, Czechia.

• KIT announced an AI data center in Karlsruhe, Germany, estimated at EUR 24 million (approximately USD 28 million), opening in 2030.

Southern and Western Europe

• NxN entered Portugal with the acquisition of a 1 MW data center in Évora and plans to invest EUR 100 million (approximately USD 115 million).

• Digital Realty entered Turkey with a 22 MW facility planned in Ankara through a joint venture with Rönesans. The same day, Damac and Vodafone launched their Izmir data center at 4 MW, scalable to 20 MW. The project budget has tripled to USD 300 million since announcement.

• Nation Data Center broke ground on a development in Vélizy-Villacoublay, France, and Castle IT announced its second facility in Saint-Omer.

• Global Switch announced it will host a large Nvidia Blackwell deployment at its Paris data center.

• Equinix and CPP closed the acquisition of atNorth, with Partners Group retaining a minority stake.

Policy and project setbacks

• The Scottish Parliament backed a de facto, temporary moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, with no plans to be approved until new planning guidance is published.

• Finland proposed abandoning first-come, first-served grid connections, which would push data centers down the queue under a draft amendment with four priority groupings.

• Plans for a 120 MW data center in Lombardy, Italy were withdrawn after the mayor said the municipality never received the data needed for the grid connection.

• Data center development in Masovian Voivodeship, Poland was halted when city councillors voted unanimously against permitting the Nowa Wieś facility.

• The European Commission proposed energy and water efficiency disclosure rules for data centers, now subject to a two-month scrutiny period.

List of Major Data Center Projects in Asia, Policy and Investments - September 2026

India and Southeast Asia led Asian data center activity. TCS HyperVault signed an MoU for an AI campus of up to 1 GW in Hyderabad, and BDx broke ground on a 640 MW campus in West Java. Hong Kong drew capital and an Amazon acquisition, Malaysia attracted AI leases and onsite power plans, and Japan saw a run of groundbreakings and acquisitions in Tokyo. Thailand moved the other way, pausing construction while it drafts new rules.

India

TCS's HyperVault signed an MoU with the Telangana government for an AI data center campus of up to 1 GW in Future City, Hyderabad, on 264 acres. The investment is up to INR 70,000 crore (approximately USD 8 billion, estimated). TPG had previously committed INR 18,000 crore to HyperVault. On September 14, a renewable power MoU with SECI followed.

Waaree Renewable Technologies formed a data center subsidiary, Aurovault Data Centers. The company has yet to commence operations.

Southeast Asia

Indonesia

BDx broke ground on AI Campus 2 in Jatiluhur, Purwakarta, West Java. The campus has 640 MW of IT load across six buildings, with 845 MVA of grid capacity secured from PLN. The first 120 MW building is set to go live in early 2027. The campus is supported by a USD 320 million loan arranged in April 2026, which also covers a second campus.

Malaysia

• DayOne and TNB Power Generation signed a non-binding MoU to explore up to 1.5 GW of onsite generation plus battery storage for a planned campus on 78.8 acres in Selangor. The 1.5 GW figure refers to generation capacity, not IT load.

• Bitdeer AI signed a 10-year agreement for 65.1 MW of critical IT load at its A202 building in Johor Bahru, hosting Nvidia GB300 NVL72 systems. Power is expected in the third quarter of 2027, and the lease takes the campus to 86.8 MW. DCD reported the deal on September 18.

• Amazon Data Services bought about two million square feet of land in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur, from Sunsuria.

• Meta signed on to use AI capacity at Firmus' Southeast Asia data centers, building on existing agreements in Australia. On September 8, Firmus also agreed to provide OpenAI with compute capacity in Malaysia.

• Key ASIC and CT Vision announced plans for a green AI data center in Malaysia powered entirely by renewable energy.

• Alibaba Cloud said it will expand its existing footprint in Malaysia, alongside new cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands.

Thailand

On September 4, Thailand announced it had paused construction on 49 data centers while it prepared new regulations, citing power consumption and community impact. DCD reported the pause on September 7. A September 25 report said Thailand is set to finalize the new rules by mid-October, expected to classify facilities above 100 MW as hyperscale.

Despite the pause, Evolution DC signed a pre-lease with an unnamed hyperscaler on September 4 for the first phase of its Bangkok data center. The facility is the company's first in Thailand and is due online later in 2026.

Vietnam and the Philippines

• Cryptominer BTC Digital signed an MoU with a local developer to explore an AI data center in Vietnam.

• SG.GS signed on as a colocation customer of PLDT's Vitro REIT, deploying networking systems across Vitro's carrier-neutral facilities in the Philippines.

Greater China

• The Goodman Hong Kong Data Centre Partnership raised USD 455 million for HKG10 at 128 Texaco Road, Tsuen Wan. The equity funds the mechanical and electrical fit-out of a facility with 50 MW of primary power and 32 MW of IT load. DCD cites first capacity in early 2028, while Mingtiandi gives 2029 for completion.

• Amazon agreed to acquire two Hong Kong data centers, buying a leased facility from its landlord.

• GLP began development of a 200 MW data center in Foshan, China, with a first phase of 40 MW. On September 9, JD Cloud and Moore Threads announced a cluster of 100,000 GPUs built on Chinese hardware. On September 22, Alibaba said its cloud capacity will reach 20 GW by 2032.

• BrightRay announced a 40 MW data center in Macau and plans to sell a majority stake to BUUU.

Japan and South Korea

Japan saw several Tokyo-area developments:

• DayOne broke ground on its second Tokyo campus.

• Ada Infrastructure broke ground on its latest Tokyo data center, and Keppel acquired a majority stake in two Tokyo data centers from an unnamed seller.

• Dell Technologies and Rhaelm announced an AI infrastructure partnership, with the first project planned at a power plant in Chiba.

• ai& said it is looking to buy up to 100 units of Rebellions' RebelRack infrastructure for AI deployment in Japan.

 In South Korea, SGC Energy and Vertiv will deploy PowerNexus at a planned AI data center in Gunsan, expected to be energized in 2028, announced September 8. The same report noted that OpenAI's Stargate efforts in South Korea have stalled.

Financing

On September 10, Zankore secured a USD 3.1 billion senior term loan facility for its AI cloud build-out. The company will build an initial 100 MW, scaling to 1 GW.

List of Major Data Center Projects in APAC Region, Policy and Investments - September 2026

Australia dominated APAC data center activity. Anthropic signed a lease for the first stage of Zerra DC's 1.44 GW Western Downs Digital Park in Queensland, and CDC filed for a 1.4 GW campus at Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. HyperDC filed for a 400 MW campus near Geelong, Victoria. 

Developers are moving toward regional sites with spare transmission capacity, while Sydney's metro market saw one approval and one withdrawal. Victoria proposed rules requiring data centers to secure their own renewable energy supply.

Queensland

On September 16, Anthropic signed a lease for the first stage of Zerra DC's Western Downs Digital Park, near Kogan and Dalby. The campus is planned at 1.44 GW of IT load across four 360 MW stages, with about 2.16 GVA of total facility demand. 

Zerra DC is backed by AGP Sustainable Real Assets and is developing the site with Macquarie Capital, with a Dexus consortium as part-owner. A development application was lodged on August 17. Council and FIRB approvals are pending, and the first hall is targeted for 2027.

New South Wales

CDC plans a gigawatt-scale campus at 216 Ashfords Road, Gregadoo, outside Wagga Wagga. CDC lodged a scoping report and a request for Secretary's Environmental Assessment 

Requirements (SEARs) on September 16. 

The filing covers four buildings totaling 189,325 square meters on about 103 hectares, with power demand of up to 1.4 GW. The investment is AUD 15 billion (approximately USD 10.4 billion). The site is 1.3 km from a Transgrid 330 kV substation and needs rezoning from RU1. The campus sits well outside the usual New South Wales hubs of Sydney and Canberra.

Sydney's market moved in two directions:

• On September 7, Goodman received approval for a 135 MW data center at 4-10 Talavera Road, Macquarie Park, first announced in 2024.

• On September 28, Goodman withdrew its application for the 90 MW Project Mars campus in Sydney, saying the data center policy and regulatory environment has "evolved significantly."

Victoria

• HyperDC filed plans for a 400 MW campus outside Geelong. The site is near an existing substation and a battery energy storage project, and HyperDC is a new player in the market.

• Victoria proposed rules requiring data centers to secure their own renewable energy supply, alongside provisions to prevent cost shifting and excessive water use. On September 3, Amazon signed its first APAC battery storage tolling deal, with Anza Power, tied to the Bairnsdale Battery Energy Storage System.

Tasmania, Albury and the neocloud market

• Firmus proposed a 52 MW data center at Wesley Vale, its third project in Tasmania.

• SharonAI bought a former printing press outside Albury, with plans not yet detailed.

• On September 28, Sharon AI agreed to lease capacity from GreenSquareDC at a former IBM site.

• Nvidia announced partnerships with Australian cloud providers and data center operators to bring 2 GW online by 2027.

• Diraq and Equinix announced plans to install the first quantum computer in an Australian commercial data center, at a Sydney site expected by October 2026.

Financing and capital markets

On September 11, NextDC raised AUD 1.1 billion (approximately USD 760 million, estimated) in convertible notes to fund data center build-out. On September 14, a report said Firmus is seeking a USD 5 billion raise in an Australian IPO, with an offering targeted for October.

Conclusion

September 2026 highlighted the continued shift toward gigawatt-scale, AI-focused data center development, with major projects advancing across key global markets. While strong investment and construction activity continued, growing pressure on power grids, land, water, and permitting is likely to shape where and how new data centers are developed.

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