More than $61 billion has been invested in the data center market in 2025, a slight increase from $60.8 billion in 2024, driven by the intense demand for infrastructure to support AI workloads. This surge in investment is occurring amid a "global construction frenzy" and increasing reliance on external capital, particularly debt financing, by hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud cnbc.com.
The dealmaking in data centers reached record highs, with over 100 transactions recorded in the first 11 months of 2025, exceeding the total number of deals in 2024. The majority of these deals were in the U.S., followed by the Asia-Pacific region. Debt issuance nearly doubled to $182 billion in 2025 from $92 billion in 2024, with Meta, Google, and Amazon being active issuers. Meta alone raised $62 billion in debt since 2022, with almost half of that in 2025 cnbc.com.
Despite the record investments, investors are growing wary of inflated valuations in the AI sector and the significant financing required for data center expansion. Concerns about an AI-fueled bubble led to a sell-off in global stocks in November. JPMorgan analysts predict that over $5 trillion will be spent on building AI infrastructure over the next five years, with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta expected to spend over $400 billion on data centers in 2026, building on over $350 billion in 2025 ft.com. Local communities are also increasingly opposing data center developments due to concerns about utility bills and electricity disruptions, with $98 billion in projects blocked or delayed in Q2 2025 alone due to local action ft.com.
