Hyperscale grows to 67%
Analysts project hyperscale datacenters will account for roughly 67% of global datacenter capacity by 2031, signaling further concentration of physical AI infrastructure in giant facilities. That trend reinforces buying and placement questions for enterprises trying to balance control, cost and latency. (broadbandbreakfast.com)
The biggest cloud operators already control nearly half of global data center capacity, and Synergy Research says they will reach 67 percent by 2031. (srgresearch.com) Synergy said hyperscale companies ran 1,360 large data centers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, with Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services among the companies driving the buildout. Their share of worldwide capacity stood at 48 percent at year-end 2025. (srgresearch.com) A data center is a warehouse of servers, networking gear and power systems, and “capacity” is the amount of computing and electrical load those buildings can support. Synergy said almost 60 percent of hyperscale capacity now sits in facilities the operators built and own themselves, with the rest in leased sites. (srgresearch.com) The same forecast shows enterprise on-premises facilities moving the other way. Synergy said on-premises capacity fell from 56 percent of the global total in 2018 to 32 percent in 2025 and will drop to 19 percent by 2031. (srgresearch.com) Non-hyperscale colocation providers, which rent out data center space and power to other companies, are holding a steadier slice. Synergy put that segment at about 20 percent of total capacity now and said it will be roughly 22 percent in 2031. (srgresearch.com) The near-term driver is artificial intelligence, which packs more chips, power and cooling equipment into each new building than older cloud workloads did. Synergy said hyperscale capacity is set to double in three years, with almost 800 more hyperscale sites in its future pipeline. (srgresearch.com) That expansion is colliding with basic constraints: electricity, land and construction timelines. CBRE said a worldwide power shortage is limiting data center growth, pushing up prices and steering developers toward secondary markets with more available power. (cbre.com) JLL said in its 2025 outlook that the cost and availability of power for advanced artificial intelligence workloads are reshaping site selection, power sourcing and facility design. In plain terms, the biggest operators are not just buying more servers; they are competing for grid access years before buildings open. (jll.com) For companies that still run their own computing rooms, the choice is getting narrower: keep sensitive systems close, or move more work into cloud and colocation buildings that can secure power and specialized cooling. The physical footprint of the artificial intelligence boom is concentrating in fewer, larger campuses. (srgresearch.com)
