OUTLOOK

Integrating solutions to interconnected challenges

AI-driven growth brings huge opportunities, but success depends on coordinated, sustainable infrastructure development

The past decade has shown just how quickly a new industry can evolve and cement itself as a prominent sector within global construction markets. As data centre development continues to grow and expand, the next decade will be defined by the construction sector’s ability to meet the demands of unprecedented scale and continued rapid technological change.

Strong foundations

Positively, the sector’s outlook remains overwhelmingly optimistic for the future. Only 20 percent of respondents consider the industry as vulnerable or highly vulnerable to economic downturn – showing more confidence than the equivalent 26 percent in our 2025 survey. Reasons for optimism include:

Continued strengthening demand for digital infrastructure
Ongoing investment in cloud computing, AI and advanced manufacturing
Growing integration of data into every aspect of society and the economy
Greater prevalence of reinforcing digital security among the public and policymakers.

The challenge facing developers, operators, utilities and governments is how to deliver that capacity at unprecedented speed and scale while navigating increasingly complex constraints around power, labour, infrastructure, sustainability and public acceptance.

Figure 10:

At present, which of the following best describes your view of the data centre industry’s resilience to an economic downturn?

AI growth and the impact on demand

With AI a fixture of the data centre market, the industry’s focus has moved towards understanding the scale of the demand it presents. Across global markets, organisations are investing heavily in AI infrastructure, creating a pipeline unlike anything the sector has previously experienced.

Our survey shows that over the past 12 months, 39 percent of respondents have been working primarily on delivering AI-ready data centres, with 53 percent anticipating AI-dominant workloads next year.

Figure 11:

The past 12 months – data centres and AI workloads

Figure 12:

The next 12 months – data centres and AI workloads

Figure 13:

What could the government in your region do to support the construction and delivery of data centres needed to meet growing demand for AI and data processing?

The role of government

For policymakers, this creates both opportunities and challenges. Many governments increasingly recognise data centres as critical infrastructure which is essential to economic growth, innovation and national competitiveness.

However, it is clear from our survey that data centre owners and operators would welcome further collaboration with governments to help in meeting the demands of AI, potentially through accelerating grid connections where possible. There is also an opportunity to streamline planning permission and permitting processes in suitable locations, with a well-considered plan on how these facilities will contribute to the development of the local areas and communities.

The most successful data centre markets will be those where governments are able to work proactively and coordinate with the sector to drive mutually beneficial developments.

Longevity and asset lifecycles

Challenges around power supply and public support for data centres have come to the fore as the industry scales up. Yet there is also increasing attention on the longer-term usability of data centres, which poses questions about asset resilience and adaptability.

64 percent of survey respondents say that sustainability and ESG requirements are moderately, considerably or significantly impacting the designs of new data centres they work on. Significant design changes to projects during the delivery phase in response to local feedback and expert advice are now commonplace, and this is likely to continue in the long term as the pace of technological evolution means data centres must increasingly be designed with future requirements in mind.

While the scale of the developments can cause concern in some quarters, the fundamental structures of data centres are incredibly flexible, reusable, and built for the long-term. The technology within centres can be easily removed and replaced as technology improves, creating ever more efficient infrastructure without an equivalent carbon cost from a new building every time.

To ensure this longevity is maximised, developers should actively consider the full lifecycle of these structures, and ensure they are built to cater flexibly for future demands and refits.

Government-backed sovereign AI investment

Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN initiative – committing over US$100bn to build 11 data centres
The European Union’s AI Gigafactories initiative – designed to unlock over €30bn in public-private co-financing for massive-scale compute
Japan’s Physical-AI and National Compute Strategy – featuring 140MW of dedicated data centre capacity
Canada’s Sovereign Large-Scale AI Data Centres Program – spearheading proposals to build and anchor sovereign, large-scale AI data centres that exceed 100MW

The rising importance of data sovereignty

Alongside AI, few trends are likely to have a greater influence on future data centre development than data sovereignty.

Governments around the world are increasingly viewing digital infrastructure through the lens of national security and strategic independence and as a result, sovereign data centre investment is expected to become a growing feature of the global market.

This trend extends beyond traditional concerns around data storage and localisation. Increasingly, countries are seeking greater control over the infrastructure that supports AI, cloud computing and critical digital services. In many regions, this is leading directly to government investment where sovereign programmes are now scale buyers.

In other regions, policymakers are providing funding and regulatory incentives designed to encourage local development and reduce reliance on overseas infrastructure, such as the UK government launching its national AI Hardware Plan to support the domestic semiconductor sector to harness its strengths in AI hardware.

This shows a growing trend across the globe – increasing emphasis on developing local technical skills and building sovereign capabilities and positioning countries at the forefront of the AI revolution to attract further investment.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A boundary-pushing decade to come

The data centre industry has spent much of the past decade responding to extraordinary growth, and now the challenge moving forward is securing the methods and tools to support its further evolution.

With digitalisation a major force across the globe, with AI driving new and more complex requirements and prompting innovative approaches, and with historic levels of investment forecasted to flow to every corner of the world, the sector’s future looks exceptionally strong. However, the sector’s greatest opportunity is also its greatest challenge: delivering the critical infrastructure needed for our increasingly digital world.

Success will ultimately depend on the industry’s ability to think beyond the boundaries of a single project. Power, water, supply chains, labour, planning, sustainability and data sovereignty are becoming interconnected challenges that require coordinated solutions

Organisations that have the ability to attract talent, build genuine partnerships, earn public trust and adapt to changing requirements will be best placed to lead the next chapter of data centre growth.