The number of hyperscale data centers has surpassed 1,000 facilities in early 2024, Synergy Research Group reveals. The report highlights a doubling in total capacity within just four years, propelled by the rapid expansion of these data centers alongside a continual increase in average capacity.
According to Synergy’s data, the United States remains the dominant force, commanding 51 percent of worldwide capacity in terms of critical IT load, with Europe and China contributing significantly to the remainder.
Projections from Synergy indicate an imminent doubling of total hyperscale data center capacity within the next four years, driven not only by the addition of 120-130 new facilities annually but also by the escalating scale of newly established data centers, fueled notably by advancements in generative AI technology.
The research draws on an analysis of the data center landscape of 19 major cloud and internet service providers globally, encompassing leaders in Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), search, social networking, e-commerce, and gaming sectors.
Among these, industry giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google stand out with expansive data center footprints not only in the US but also across numerous countries worldwide. Together, these three behemoths claim 60 percent of all hyperscale data center capacity, followed by Meta/Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, Apple, ByteDance, and other smaller operators.
John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group, underscores the complexity underlying the growth trends, noting variations in size between self-owned and leased data centers, as well as disparities between domestic and international facilities.
The forecasted growth, largely based on Synergy’s monitoring of hyperscale operators’ pipeline of future data centers, anticipates the addition of 440 new facilities at various stages of planning, development, or deployment.
