--- title: "There Are Signs of Serious Trouble in the Data Center Industry" description: "Cracks are forming in the foundations of the data center industry, with a huge number of projects falling through entirely." date: "2026-10-22" modified: "2026-10-22" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/signs-trouble-data-center-industry" categories: - "Anthropic" - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Computing" - "OpenAI" - "Robots and Machines" --- # There Are Signs of Serious Trouble in the Data Center Industry ![A photo shows an AI data center under construction in Texas.]() *Shutterstock / harhar38* Ever since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, a torrent of money has flowed into building out data centers to power the AI boom. The efforts reached a fever pitch the day after Donald Trump's second inauguration in 2025, when a bevy of AI luminaries including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Softbank founder Masayoshi Son crowded into the Oval Office to announce a $500 billion private investment in data centers. But as the [public has grown jittery]() about the impacts of AI on society and the job market — and [story]() after [story]() has landed about the downsides of hosting data centers in local communities — the buildout has emerged as a major political flashpoint and a key issue in the looming midterms. The data industry's headwinds aren't just political, either. As the [*Financial Times* reports](), serious cracks are forming at the financial and logistical level, especially as serious AI revenue remains elusive. Numbers cited by the paper are eye-popping. Drawing on data from regulatory intelligence outfit RegLayer, the *FT* reports that 47 large data center projects have already fallen through this year. Analysts at the equity research firm Bernstein only believe that about 35 percent of planned facilities are feasible. All those canceled projects are due to a lot of factors, including local communities [mobilizing against them](), but it's also macroeconomic. The buildout is taking place during a period of high interest rates and shaky bond markets, and people involved with the effort told the paper that the situation is "threatening their ambitions." Some of the plans were shaky to begin with. The *FT* reports that top labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have pushed so hard for the developments, believing them to be key to their success, that they've swallowed outsized costs and deemphasized due diligence. Investors are taking notice: stock in CoreWeave, a cloud provider closely linked to the AI data center industry, has fallen by more than 27 percent over the past month. The *really* big question, though, is what happens to all these data center projects if the bottom starts to fall out of the AI industry financially, a situation that [many economists have warned]() is a possibility over the past few years. For now, things are still chugging along — albeit much more slowly than anticipated. "People aren’t just dropping their shorts for data centers anymore," one unnamed executive told the *FT*. "It’s much harder today to finance a data center." **More on data centers:** *[Residents Reject $10,000 Each to Let a Data Center Set Up in Their Town]()* ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()