Data‑center buildout outpaces offices
U.S. construction spending on data centers has now surpassed offices for the first time, with Meta’s huge Ohio compute hub cited as emblematic of the scale shift — a sign capex is flowing to exchange‑adjacent compute and high‑density facilities reported.
Census‑based estimates show December 2025 monthly outlays hit roughly $3.57 billion for data‑center construction (bloomberg.com), compared with about $3.49 billion for office construction in the same month. ConstructConnect reported a record $25.2 billion in U.S. data‑center construction starts for January 2026, including two individual projects valued at $10 billion each and lifting the trailing‑12‑month starts to about $103.7 billion (news.constructconnect.com). Meta’s New Albany “Prometheus” supercluster is billed as a one‑gigawatt facility expected to come online in 2026 (nbc4i.com), and the company signaled a broader push by planning roughly $60–$65 billion in AI‑related capital expenditures in 2025. (cnbc.com). Turner Construction said it completed about $9.4 billion of data‑center projects in 2025, a five‑fold increase from 2020, and was named a contractor on a separate $10 billion Meta campus in Indiana. (bloomberg.com). Major alternative‑asset managers including Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR have been allocating capital to hyperscale campuses, according to investment activity cited by Bloomberg (bloomberg.com), while brokers report hyperscale clients are locking 10–15‑year power and capacity deals that underpin long‑dated leases. (bloomberg.com). The Census construction series tracks building work only and excludes IT hardware such as racks and servers, so the crossover reflects structural buildout rather than total tech spend inside the shells. (ourworldindata.org).
