Manya Rathore
Research expert covering India
Data center real estate - statistics & facts
As global IP traffic grows, so does the need for infrastructure to support it. In recent years, the growing demand for data centers has increasingly attracted the attention of real estate investors.In the first 11 months of 2024, the value of data center investment came in below recent peaks, underscoring shifting deal dynamics. According to a survey among industry professionals, data centers are the real estate investment sector with the highest investment prospects among all sectors in the European real estate. Whether it is cloud, colocation, or managed data centers, one thing is for sure: with digitalization accelerating and the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), growing the data center infrastructure will remain in focus.
World's leading data center hubs
Despite their growing popularity, the data center investment market in the U.S. is significantly smaller than other property types such as offices, retail, or industrial and logistics. This makes data centers an attractive alternative asset class to those who seek to diversify their real estate portfolio. In the occupiers market, soaring demand and constrained supply have driven the average monthly rental rate to 196 U.S. dollars per kilowatt in 2025. Data center construction in the United States has surged accordingly, with almost six gigawatts of power supply under construction in 2025, nearly double the level seen in 2023. Looking at the Asia Pacific region, Tokyo had close to 950 megawatts of data center inventory as of early 2025, while emerging Southeast Asian markets like Johor were building out some of the region's largest development pipelines.
AI Spending Commits Trillions to New Infrastructure
The scale of capital flowing into AI-related data center development has no historical precedent. Global AI infrastructure spending was is forecast to reach 902 billion by 2029. Looking further ahead, cumulative AI-driven data center capital expenditure is projected to reach between 3.7 trillion and 7.9 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030, depending on the growth scenario. Under the most accelerated scenario, IT equipment alone would require 4.7 trillion U.S. dollars in investment, with data center infrastructure accounting for a further 2.6 trillion over the same period.
The digital economy continues to expand rapidly, fueled by the transformative potential of AI. Yet unleashing that potential will depend on whether data center infrastructure and capacity can keep pace.
