AI Bubble Talk? 🤔

That rumor that datacenter construction is slowing down, well it’s true. Power availability has replaced land as the primary constraint, but there’s also a lot of community opposition to projects now in most U.S. states.

How far or fast did they fall? New data center announcements fell by half in Q4 2025.

Community opposition has evolved from a localized nuisance into a structural "deal-breaker" for the industry in 2026. The supply chain for critical power and cooling components remains brittle too.

Community pushback has become a "material driver of attrition." In 2025 and early 2026, roughly 30% to 50% of large-scale projects faced delays or cancellations. Many U.S states now have temp datacenter building freezes.

Water usage, zoning changes, multiple bottlenecks for each project. There are even specialized labor shortages. Lead times for heavy electrical equipment have stretched significantly 12 to 24 months.

BigTech is going to have to build more global and less local, it turns out. That means emerging “Neo Clouds” and other countries could be in luck.