The first gigawatt-scale AI data centers are arriving this year, and there are five of them.
According to research by Epoch AI, five data centers at a scale of one gigawatt or more are expected to come online in 2026, each operated by a different hyperscaler. xAI’s Colossus 2 in Memphis is projected to have the fastest buildout, targeting 12 months to reach gigawatt-scale
One gigawatt is the output of a large nuclear power plant. These are single campuses consuming that much electricity to run AI training and inference. And behind the five coming this year is a pipeline that dwarfs them.
The numbers behind the buildout The scale of what is being planned has no historical parallel in data center development. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is “planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time.” Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana is designed for five gigawatts, with a two-gigawatt first phase to be completed by 2030, according to IEEE Spectrum. OpenAI’s Stargate program, a joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank, has reached about seven gigawatts of planned capacity, with a cumulative investment estimate topping $400 billion on the way to a 10-gigawatt target, according to Data Center Frontier.