By the end of 2023, the number of hyperscale data centers surged to 992, hitting over a thousand early in 2024. In just four years, the collective capacity of these centers doubled, propelled by a rapid rise in their numbers and escalating average capacity.
Recent findings from Synergy Research Group reveal that the United States retains a lion's share of 51% in global capacity, measured by MW of critical IT load, while Europe and China each claim approximately a third of the remainder.
Projections indicate that the overall capacity of hyperscale data centers will double once more within the next four years, with an estimated influx of 120-130 new centers annually. This growth surge will primarily stem from the augmented scale of newly established centers, fueled by generative AI technologies.
While the primary data centers are expanding exponentially, there's also a noticeable uptick in the deployment of smaller data centers to bring infrastructure closer to end-users, often at the edge of the network, to reduce latency and improve the performance of applications and services. This trend is known as edge computing.
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