Companies With Data Centers That May Use More Energy Than Cities

America’s electricity infrastructure is facing a looming crisis. In the coming years, the risk of sporadic blackouts is projected to rise substantially for millions of Americans as demand is forecast to exceed production capacity, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. Future challenges for the country’s power grid include the rising frequency of severe weather, including cold snaps and heatwaves. But underlying much of the expected demand surge is the AI data center boom. 

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers – which house servers that power AI and other computing technology – are the most energy intensive buildings in the country, using as much as 50 times more energy per square foot than the average commercial building. And in a race to corner the AI market, America’s tech giants are spending unprecedented sums to build these facilities. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft alone are projected to allocate a combined $750 billion to AI infrastructure in 2026, a 77% increase from last year, according to a recent report from Goldman Sachs.

Currently, there are nearly 2,000 data centers operating across the United States, and according to the AI industry publication Aterio, another 789 are under construction and nearly 3,500 more have been announced. Today, active data centers have a combined power capacity of 46 gigawatts, equal to approximately 37.4 million average American homes – more than double the number of households in the state of California. Should all planned and constructed data centers come online, cumulative power capacity will be approximately 400 gigawatts. 

Notably, a data center’s power capacity is not a reflection of total energy use, but rather a measure of the maximum electrical load a facility can support. Importantly, data centers rarely, if ever, run at maximum capacity. 

Using data from Aterio’s U.S. Data Centers Monthly Report from June 2026, Climate Crisis 247 identified the companies behind the data centers capable of using more energy than America’s largest cities. We ranked all companies with available data on the power capacity of their existing data centers. City equivalents were calculated using the annual power usage of a typical U.S. home, converting that figure from kilowatt hours to megawatts, and comparing to the number of households in major American cities. Average power usage is as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and data on households by city are one-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey. All other supplemental data is from Aterio. 

 10. Vantage Data Centers

• Existing data centers power capacity: 790.0 megawatts 
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 641,312 typical homes (approx. equal to Phoenix, Arizona)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: 3,649.7 megawatts (31 facilities total)
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: 3.0 million typical homes (approx. equal to 4X Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

 9. xAI

• Existing data centers power capacity: 927.8 megawatts 
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 753,144 typical homes (approx. equal to 2X San Francisco, California)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: N/A
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: N/A

 8. Switch Data Centers

• Existing data centers power capacity: 1,126.1 megawatts 
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 914,113 typical homes (approx. equal to Houston, Texas)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: N/A
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: N/A

 7. CyrusOne

• Existing data centers power capacity: 1,301.2 megawatts 
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 1.1 million typical homes (approx. equal to 4X Baltimore, Maryland)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: N/A
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: N/A

 6. QTS Data Centers

• Existing data centers power capacity: 2,300.8 megawatts (57 facilities total)
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 1.9 million typical homes (approx. equal to 9X Colorado Springs, Colorado)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: 2,987.0 megawatts (107 facilities total)
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: 2.4 million typical homes (approx. equal to 2X Chicago, Illinois)

 5. Digital Realty

• Existing data centers power capacity: 2,374.3 megawatts (206 facilities total)
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 1.9 million typical homes (approx. equal to 4X Austin, Texas)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: N/A
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: N/A

 4. Meta (Facebook)

• Existing data centers power capacity: 4,156.8 megawatts (94 facilities total)
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 3.4 million typical homes (approx. equal to 6X San Antonio, Texas)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: 6,611.7 megawatts (77 facilities total)
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: 5.4 million typical homes (approx. equal to 11X Houston, Texas)

 3. Google

• Existing data centers power capacity: 4,998.8 megawatts (82 facilities total)
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 4.1 million typical homes (approx. equal to 15X Louisville, Kentucky)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: 11,024.0 megawatts (131 facilities total)
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: 8.9 million typical homes (approx. equal to 9X Houston, Texas)

 2. Microsoft

• Existing data centers power capacity: 5,115.4 megawatts (114 facilities total)
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 4.2 million typical homes (approx. equal to 10X Jacksonville, Florida)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: 2,970.5 megawatts (132 facilities total)
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: 2.4 million typical homes (approx. equal to 5X Austin, Texas)

 1. Amazon AWS

• Existing data centers power capacity: 9,385.8 megawatts (206 facilities total)
• Existing data center power capacity equivalent: 7.6 million typical homes (approx. equal to 20X Charlotte, North Carolina)
• Power capacity of data centers announced or under construction: 27,105.2 megawatts (433 facilities total)
• Future data center power capacity equivalent: 22.0 million typical homes (approx. equal to 15X Los Angeles, California)