41% of New US Data-Center Projects at Risk of Halt After Democratic Governor Wins; Musk Faces Biggest Blow
Summary
- The report said 41% of all US data-center construction and development plans are concentrated in five states where Democrats recaptured the governorship, increasing the risk of project suspensions.
- With Texas accounting for 26.9% of all data centers, it said Elon Musk's new SpaceX data-center construction could face the biggest blow.
- Gary Ng said that if US artificial-intelligence development slows, Chinese companies could push into overseas markets with abundant power and low-cost inference services.
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Five states where Democrats recaptured the governorship in the US midterm elections account for 41% of all data-center projects under construction or in development nationwide, heightening the risk that those plans could be halted.
Data-center project tracker DCMap said on November 4 that Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Nevada and Iowa had 505 data centers under construction or planned. Those projects total 142.5 gigawatts of power capacity, equal to 41.2% of all US projects on that basis.
By state, 26.9% of US data-center capacity, or 93.1 gigawatts, is concentrated in Texas, where governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on halting new data-center development. Georgia followed with 19.8 gigawatts, or 5.7%, and Ohio with 17.6 gigawatts, or 5.1%. Georgia governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms said she would temporarily suspend new data-center construction until the state studies the economic and environmental impact. Ohio governor-elect Amy Acton has said construction should be delayed until data-center companies bear the full cost of electricity.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX, stands to take the biggest hit from the Texas election result. Musk spent $446 million backing Republican candidates nationwide, including $200 million to support Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate in Texas. SpaceX is known to be pursuing construction of a new 1-gigawatt data center in the state.
Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis, said a slowdown in US artificial-intelligence development could amount to a win for China. Delays in US data-center construction would constrain the supply of computing resources and raise the price of AI services. That could help Chinese companies expand overseas by offering abundant power and lower-cost inference services.
Kim In-yeop, Silicon Valley correspondent, Hankyung.com inside@hankyung.com
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