Data centers
Data centers are the physical facilities housing the servers, storage, networking gear and power systems that the internet, enterprise IT, AI training and inference workloads actually run on. Global colocation and hyperscale capacity passed 50 GW of installed IT load in 2025, with another 60-70 GW under construction or pre-leased. AI training and inference are the dominant marginal driver: hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle) committed roughly $400B of combined capex in 2025, the bulk of it routed through new data center builds, and have signalled comparable spend in 2026. Power, not floor space, is now the binding constraint, with 200 MW+ campuses replacing the 10-20 MW retail facilities that defined the prior cycle.
The category spans hyperscale build-to-suit campuses, wholesale and retail colocation, interconnection and carrier-neutral hubs, edge and metro facilities, AI-specialised liquid-cooled facilities, and the GPU cloud operators leasing capacity from these landlords.
Revenue comes from monthly recurring colocation rent priced per kilowatt or per cabinet, power reimbursement at a margin over utility cost, cross-connect and interconnection fees inside carrier hotels, long-dated hyperscale leases structured as triple-net real estate, and capital recycling through REIT and infrastructure-fund vehicles.
Data centers is part of Digital infrastructure.
$383B
Global market size
64
Public companies
Key VC investors
Key strategic buyers
How data centers companies monetize?
Data centers monetize through colocation rent, power markup and interconnection fees.
Colocation rent
Monthly recurring revenue priced per kilowatt of contracted power or per cabinet. The core revenue line for Equinix, Digital Realty and the wholesale operators.
Power markup
Utility power resold to tenants at a margin over the metered cost, plus PUE-driven cooling overhead. Significant absolute dollar contribution at AI densities of 50-150 kW per rack.
Interconnection fees
Monthly fees on cross-connects, peering ports and cloud on-ramps inside carrier-neutral facilities. Highest-margin revenue line at Equinix and a structural moat against new entrants.
Hyperscale build-to-suit
10-15 year triple-net leases on dedicated campuses pre-leased to a single hyperscaler. Underwritten as long-duration real estate; the model for Vantage, Aligned, Stack and CyrusOne pipeline.
Managed and professional services
Smart hands, remote hands, migration support and managed network services billed on top of the base lease. Smaller line but accretive to retention.
Asset recycling
Stabilised assets sold or contributed into JVs, REITs and infrastructure funds to recycle capital into the next development pipeline. Standard at DigitalBridge, Blackstone (QTS), KKR/GIP (CyrusOne) and Brookfield.
Data centers valuations in May 2026
Public data centers comps trade at 7.5x EV/Revenue. Median revenue multiple across data centers M&A deals was 5.4x in the last 12 months. Median revenue multiple across data centers VC rounds was 23x in the last 12 months.
7.5x
Median EV/Revenue as of May 2026 for public data centers companies
12x
Oracle is the highest valued public data centers company based on EV/Revenue (excluding outliers)
5.4x
Median EV/Revenue across data centers M&A deals in the last 12 months
23x
Median EV/Revenue across data centers VC rounds in the last 12 months
Data centers market segments
Data centers span hyperscale build-to-suit, wholesale and retail colocation and AI-specialised liquid-cooled facilities.
Hyperscale build-to-suit operators
Developers building dedicated campuses pre-leased to a single hyperscale tenant on 10-15 year terms. The fastest-growing category since 2023, driven by AWS, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle AI capex. Key players: Vantage Data Centers, Aligned Data Centers, Stack Infrastructure and CyrusOne.
Wholesale colocation
Multi-megawatt suites leased to enterprises and second-tier cloud providers, typically 1-10 MW deals on 5-10 year terms. Lower margins than retail but lower customer acquisition cost. Key players: Digital Realty, QTS (Blackstone), NTT Global Data Centers and CoreSite (American Tower).
Retail colocation and interconnection
Carrier-neutral facilities renting cabinets and partial cages to thousands of enterprises, ISPs, SaaS vendors and network operators, monetised heavily through cross-connects and cloud on-ramps. Key players: Equinix, Cyxtera (emerged from Chapter 11 in 2024), Iron Mountain Data Centers and CoreSite (American Tower).
Edge and metro data centers
Smaller facilities of 1-5 MW positioned close to end users for latency-sensitive workloads, content caching and 5G mobile-edge compute. Mostly metro builds in tier-two cities. Key players: EdgeConneX (EQT), Compass Datacenters, DartPoints and DataBank (DigitalBridge).
AI-specialised and liquid-cooled facilities
Purpose-built sites engineered for 50-150 kW racks, direct-to-chip liquid cooling and dense GPU clusters. New build pipeline since 2023 designed around NVIDIA H100, H200, Blackwell B200 and the upcoming GB300 densities. Key players: Aligned Data Centers, Lambda On-Demand Cloud, Crusoe Energy and Applied Digital.
GPU cloud operators
Companies leasing colocation capacity and reselling it as on-demand GPU compute. Not pure infrastructure plays but the largest single source of demand for AI-specialised capacity. Key players: CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV, IPO 2025), Lambda Labs, Crusoe Energy and Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS).
Carrier hotels and internet exchanges
Dense interconnection hubs in major metros (Equinix LD8 in London, NJR1 in Ashburn, One Wilshire in LA) where carriers, content providers and clouds physically meet. Highest interconnect density and the structural moat in the sector. Key players: Equinix, DE-CIX, LINX and Telehouse (KDDI).
Hyperscale self-build
AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle building and operating their own facilities directly, typically the largest single category of new MW added globally each year. Reshapes addressable market for third-party operators by displacing direct leasing.
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Key data centers KPIs to track
MW of IT load, utilisation, PUE, WALT and AFFO are the metrics investors track in data centers.
| KPI | Definition |
|---|---|
| MW of IT load | Contracted critical IT power across the portfolio. The headline scale metric for data center operators; floor space is no longer informative on its own. |
| Utilisation | Leased MW divided by available MW. Healthy stabilised assets sit at 85-95%; new developments typically pre-lease 60-80% before powering up. |
| Cabinets and cross-connects | Cabinet count and active cross-connect count in retail/interconnection facilities. The proxy for revenue density and a near-direct read on the interconnection moat. |
| PUE | Power usage effectiveness - total facility power divided by IT power. Hyperscale builds target 1.10-1.20; older retail facilities sit at 1.4-1.6. |
| Customer concentration | Share of revenue from the top customer and top 10 customers. Critical underwriting input given that 60-80% of new MW is pre-leased to 5-6 hyperscalers. |
| WALT | Weighted average lease term. Hyperscale build-to-suit portfolios run 10-15 years; retail colocation typically 2-5 years. |
| AFFO and AFFO per share | Adjusted funds from operations - the standard cash-flow proxy for data center REITs (Equinix and Digital Realty) and the metric on which dividends and equity research are built. |
| Development pipeline (MW) | MW under construction plus held-for-development land bank. The cleanest read on forward revenue once existing portfolios are fully leased. |
Main data centers players globally
The most active data center operators and category leaders globally.
| Company | HQ | Overview |
|---|---|---|
Equinix equinix.com |  Redwood City | Largest carrier-neutral interconnection operator (NASDAQ: EQIX), with over 260 IBX facilities across 70+ metros and the highest cross-connect count in the industry. REIT structure since 2015; reported $8.7B in 2024 revenue. |
Digital Realty digitalrealty.com | Austin | Wholesale and hyperscale data center REIT (NYSE: DLR), operating over 300 facilities globally after the Interxion acquisition in 2020. Anchored relationships with all top-five hyperscalers. |
CyrusOne cyrusone.com | Dallas | Hyperscale data center developer; taken private by KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners in 2022 in a $15B take-private. Pipeline concentrated in Northern Virginia, Texas, Phoenix and the Frankfurt-London-Amsterdam-Paris corridor. |
QTS Data Centers qtsdatacenters.com | Overland Park | Hyperscale and federal-focused operator; acquired by Blackstone Infrastructure Partners in 2021 for $10B and aggressively expanded since under Blackstone's data center platform. |
Vantage Data Centers vantage-dc.com | Denver | Hyperscale build-to-suit operator; majority-owned by DigitalBridge with significant minority investment from Silver Lake. Raised $9.2B equity in 2024-25 to fund the AI campus pipeline. |
Aligned Data Centers aligneddc.com | Plano | Hyperscale and AI-specialised operator; backed by Macquarie Asset Management. Liquid-cooled platform (DeltaCube/DeltaFlow) used for high-density GPU deployments. |
NTT Global Data Centers services.global.ntt |  Tokyo | Data center arm of NTT (TSE: 9432); over 160 facilities across 20 countries after the e-shelter, Gyron, RagingWire and Netmagic acquisitions. Public REIT subsidiary (NTT Data Center REIT) listed in 2024. |
GDS Holdings gds-services.com |  Shanghai | Largest carrier-neutral data center operator in China (NASDAQ: GDS, HKEX: 9698) with over 600 MW of capacity in service. International arm DayOne spun out in 2024 with Mubadala anchor investment. |
DigitalBridge digitalbridge.com | Boca Raton | Digital infrastructure asset manager (NYSE: DBRG, formerly Colony Capital), with ~$90B AUM across data centers, towers, fiber and edge infrastructure. Portfolio includes Vantage, DataBank, Switch and Scala. |
Iron Mountain Data Centers ironmountain.com | Boston | Data center segment inside Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM); built through Mag Tower, IO Data Centers and the Frankfurt assets acquired from Credit Suisse. Federal and regulated-industry concentration. |
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Key data centers market trends
AI capex, power constraints and liquid cooling are reshaping data centers right now.
AI capex driving multi-hundred-billion buildout
AWS, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle committed roughly $400B of combined capex in 2025 with comparable spend telegraphed for 2026, the majority routed through new data center capacity. Lead times for new builds have stretched from 18-24 months to 36-48 months as supply chains for switchgear, transformers, chillers and back-up generators tighten.
Power is the binding constraint
Northern Virginia, Dublin, Singapore, Frankfurt and Amsterdam have imposed moratoria or material restrictions on new data center grid connections since 2022. Dominion Energy's Northern Virginia connection queue stretches into 2030-2031. New campuses are being sited near nuclear (Talen-AWS Susquehanna), hydro (Quebec and Pacific Northwest), stranded gas and behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage.
Liquid cooling becoming standard for AI
NVIDIA Blackwell racks at 120 kW+ have pushed direct-to-chip liquid cooling from a niche option to the default for AI builds. Vertiv (NYSE: VRT), Schneider Electric and CoolIT have all seen order books materially extend; air-cooled retrofits to liquid have become a standard capex line at major operators.
Private capital dominating ownership
Blackstone (QTS), KKR/GIP (CyrusOne), DigitalBridge (Vantage and DataBank), Macquarie (Aligned), Brookfield (Compass) and EQT (EdgeConneX) now own the bulk of new-build hyperscale capacity outside the listed REITs. Public market vehicles play less of a role than they did in the prior cycle.
Sovereign and regional capacity programs
Saudi Arabia (Humain, $100B Vision 2030 commitment), UAE (G42 and Mubadala), India (RIL Jio-Brookfield JV) and France (Mistral-led sovereign AI cloud) are funding sovereign data center capacity. The category did not exist as an investment theme three years ago and now drives 5-10 GW of pipeline.
Public market re-rating
Equinix and Digital Realty have re-rated on AI-driven demand; CoreWeave's March 2025 IPO at $23B and Nebius's NASDAQ relisting in 2024 created new comparable benchmarks. M&A multiples on stabilised hyperscale assets have moved from 18-22x EBITDA in 2021 to 25-30x in 2025 deals.
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