US hyperscale data centres are shifting inland: Here’s why

Synergy finds that data centres are shifting decisively inland, rather than US hyperscalers investing in the already-established hubs across the country.

The findings found that Texas and Midwestern states have been the main benefactors of this shift, with 33% of operational US hyperscale data centre capacity in Texas and the Midwest in 2025.

Synergy also found that the pipeline of future hyperscale data centres will account for 53% of new capacity coming online over the next few years. While Northern Virginia will continue to have the largest concentration of data centres, the continued AI infrastructure boom will lead to data centre geographies moving more inland to seek other areas where power is more available.

“As infrastructure constraints intensify and market dynamics continue to shift, hyperscale providers are increasingly reallocating capital toward central US regions, with Texas emerging as the primary focal point,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

The findings come as the industry faces overwhelming capacity constraints, with a power crunch in the US driving a wedge between new data centre demand and spare grid capacity. According to market intelligence firm Sightline Climate, as cited by Bloomberg, roughly 12 gigawatts (12GW) of data centre capacity is expected to come online in the US in 2026 – but currently, only one-third of that capacity is under active construction, due to constraints.

Likewise, the IEA said the US has the highest-per-capita data centre consumption at around 540 kWh in 2024, which is expected to grow to more than 1,200 kWh per capita by the end of the decade. This is roughly 10% of the annual electricity consumption of an American household – higher than any other region in the world.

Texas is the most prominent state in the pipeline by far, according to Synergy’s findings. In the Midwest, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Missouri are all expected to grow rapidly in importance, given that they have attracted multiple big projects from the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and CoreWeave.

“A new wave of gigawatt-scale campuses is taking shape in non-traditional locations such as Abilene, Mount Pleasant, South Bend, El Paso, Boone County and Kansas City,” Dinsdale added. “While established hubs will remain strategically important, the centre of gravity for new hyperscale investment is clearly moving elsewhere.”

While there are more operational data centres than there are in the pipeline, the pipeline actually has a bigger overall capacity, Synergy said. The findings demonstrate how hyperscale data centres have continued to increase in size in terms of their IT capacity.

Currently, the companies with the broadest data centre footprint are those leading cloud providers. In addition to this significant footprint, Amazon, Microsoft and Google account for 58% of all hyperscale data centre capacity, with Synergy citing they are closely followed behind Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Oracle, Apple and ByteDance.

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