Texas On Pace To Become The New Data Center Capital of the World Soon

Have you noticed the growth of AI data centers in Texas? If it seems like they are going up or at least proposed to be built everywhere, it's because there has been a huge explosion in the number data centers being built across Texas, in particular, West Texas.

Texas Could Soon Become the Data Center Capital of the World

According to a story from Business Insider, Virginia currently holds the title as the Data Center Capital of the World. But Virginia is running out of space and Texas is catching up pretty quickly.

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According to the report, Texas is on pace to become the largest data center market by 2030. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are looking to spend more than $600 billion on AI infrastructure expansion in 2026 alone. Business Insider reports that Texas already has 6.5 gigawatts of data center capacity under construction right now. But what does that mean? How much energy is that? Think of it as three Hoover Dams.

That amount of power is roughly equivalent to more than three Hoover Dams or over 17,000 Tesla Model 3s when using the US Department of Energy's standard, and it accounts for about one-fifth of the 35 gigawatts of data center capacity the US added to its pipeline.

That 35 gigawatts is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of the UK or Italy, and adding it would nearly double the existing data center capacity in the US, according to JLL.

Why Is Texas So Attractive For Data Centers?

We have land. Lots of space and resources according to Business Insider. That's what makes Texas attractive to the Data Center boom.

Still questions remain. Like what will these data centers do to the price of electricity and how much water is needed for them.