Almost 40% of data center projects will be late this year, 2027 looks no better

An exhaustive study by the Financial Times has found that almost half of all data centers projected to open this year are going to be at least three months late if they make it at all. The Financial Times drew upon satellite imagery from the geospatial data analytics company SynMax and cross-checked project progress against public statements and permit documents compiled by the industry research group IIR Energy. The survey measured how much progress has been made in clearing land and laying building foundations for each data center project. The resulting analysis wasn’t good; it found major projects from Microsoft, Oracle, OpenAI, and others are “likely to miss completion dates by more than three months.” Construction executives involved with OpenAI projects specifically mentioned not having enough tradespeople, such as electricians and pipe fitters, to work on multiple data center projects. Next year isn’t looking any better. SynMax estimates more than 60% of projects scheduled for next year have yet to begin construction. FT conducted interviews with more than a dozen industry executives, who said construction delays were caused by “chronic shortages of labor, power and equipment” along with the process of securing the necessary permits. Add to that the significant parts and components shortage as well as the growing revolt by both nearby residents living near proposed data center sites as well as state and local governments. OpenAI told the Financial Times, “Our historic data center build-out is on schedule and we will accelerate from here. In partnership with Oracle, SB Energy and a broader ecosystem of partners, we are delivering rapid progress in Abilene, Shackelford County and Milam County in Texas,” while Oracle said, “Each data center we’re developing for OpenAI is moving forward on time, and construction is proceeding according to plan.” Two construction executives working on OpenAI-linked projects said there were not enough specialist workers, from electricians to pipe fitters, to meet demand across the build-out as companies race to construct clusters of increasingly large and complex facilities. Data center construction is facing growing headwinds from all quarters. Umm the high hardware demands of AI’s data centers has resulted in a significant shortage of not only GPUs but also memory and storage. Hard drive makers are sold out through the end of this year and into next year and memories going for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Power is another issue. GPUs especially our power hungry and the demands of data centers have gone through the roof. With the current grid unable to support the demands, data center providers are looking to provide their own power, namely through modular nuclear data centers. Nuclear power has come back into vogue after being on the outs for so many years. Then there’s the revolt of both citizens and governments. What started out as individual groups in cities and states opposing data centers has now moved on to the state of Maine putting a pause on all data center construction through next year, and 11 other states are also considering it a similar ban. On top of all that, there are serious doubts as to whether or not AI will return the trillions of dollars of investments being made in it. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has called into question whether or not all of these massive hyperscale data centers will pay for themselves and he’s not the only one.