SOURCE RESEARCH
Cloud Service Provider Capacity Forecast
Market Data | 1Q 2026 | MD-CSPC-101
Get The ReportKey Takeaways:
Global active data center IT power capacity grows at a 23.8% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2025 to 2035, expanding from 24.4 Gigawatts (GW) to 147.1 GW. Over the full forecast period, growth reflects a structural shift toward compute-intensive Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads layered on top of continued cloud expansion. By the early 2030s, power availability, grid access, and permitting become the dominant constraints shaping build-out.
Tier One hyperscalers expand active data center IT capacity at a 15.8% CAGR from 2025 to 2035, reaching 60.2 GW. Growth remains significant but moderates over time as hyperscalers prioritize utilization efficiency, AI-specific capacity, and selective regional expansion rather than blanket geographic coverage.
Neocloud providers scale active capacity at a 33% CAGR over the full forecast window, reaching 47.4 GW by 2035. Much of this growth, to date, is driven by a small number of very large AI training contracts. Sustained long-term success will depend on deeper integration with enterprise AI workflows.
AI workloads grow at a ~31% CAGR versus ~19% for legacy workloads, with a clear inflection between 2030 and 2031 as AI capacity overtakes legacy capacity. Beyond this point, incremental growth is structurally AI-led, with legacy infrastructure increasingly deployed in service of AI workloads (supporting Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) orchestration, data movement, and storage) rather than expanding as standalone capacity.
