AI data‑centre market set to expand

Artificial intelligence data centers are moving from a niche hardware market to a multibillion-dollar buildout tied as much to electricity as to chips. (prnewswire.com) A September 12, 2025 market forecast from DataM Intelligence put the sector at $13.67 billion in 2024 and projected it would reach $78.91 billion by 2032, a compound annual growth rate of 24.5%. The report tied that jump to demand for training and running large artificial intelligence models, which need dense clusters of specialized servers, storage, and cooling. (prnewswire.com) Those facilities are not ordinary server rooms. They are warehouse-scale buildings packed with graphics processing units, the chips used for parallel calculations, and they draw so much power that developers now talk about gigawatts of capacity, the scale usually used for power plants. (iea.org, prnewswire.com) The bottleneck is increasingly the grid. The Electric Power Research Institute said data-center growth now comes with multi-year connection lead times, while the International Energy Agency said in its April 10, 2025 report that there is “no AI without energy,” specifically electricity for data centers. (restservice.epri.com, iea.org) That pressure is already reshaping forecasts. An Electric Power Research Institute study cited in its Fall 2025 journal said data centers could consume as much as 9% of United States electricity generation by 2030, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis cited there said data-center electricity use tripled from 2014 to 2024 and could double or triple again by 2028. (eprijournal.com) The industry response is to secure power earlier and more directly. The Electric Power Research Institute said utilities are planning new investments while developers are also pursuing dedicated power supplies, including nuclear and geothermal projects, to avoid waiting years for standard grid hookups. (restservice.epri.com) The politics are getting harder as the construction wave spreads. CNBC reported on March 13, 2026 that communities from Virginia to Arizona are pushing back over grid strain and electricity costs, while technology companies say they will cover added costs or line up alternative energy sources. (cnbc.com) That leaves the market forecast pointing in two directions at once: more buildings, more chips, more capital spending. But the pace of the next phase will depend on transformers, transmission lines, and power-plant connections as much as on demand for artificial intelligence itself. (prnewswire.com, restservice.epri.com, iea.org)