Data Centers by State: Which US States Have the Most in 2026?

Which State Has the Most Data Centers? Four Rankings, Four Answers

Virginia has the most data center buildings, Texas has the most capacity, and Virginia also uses the most electricity and the largest share of its own grid. Each ranking measures something different, so two articles can both be right and still disagree.

A building count favors states with lots of small sites. A capacity count favors states with a few enormous campuses. An electricity count only sees what is switched on today. A share-of-grid count flatters small states: North Dakota ranks second on it while hosting only 11 tracked buildings.

Even the experts split on the middle of the table. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report says Virginia hosts the highest data center electricity demand in the country, followed by California and Texas. EPRI's state table puts Texas second and California third. The two used different datasets and different methods, and neither is wrong. Both put Virginia first.

So if someone asks which state has the most data centers, the honest answer is Virginia for what exists and Texas for what is coming.

How Many Data Centers Are in the US? About 1,400 Operating, 4,600 Tracked

The United States has roughly 1,400 operating data center buildings, but trackers list between 4,600 and 5,100 depending on how much of the pipeline they include. Cleanview, which updated its US map on November 8, 2026, counts 4,601 buildings grouped into 1,535 campuses. DataCenterMap lists about 5,100 US facilities across all 50 states in early November 2026.

Nobody can give you a single audited figure, because none exists. Cleanview says so itself: "There's no government database of data centers." Each tracker builds its list from permits, utility filings and company announcements, then decides what counts.

More than half of everything on the map has not been built. Treat a dot as a promise, not a building. A state with 300 tracked buildings might have 40 running and 260 on paper.

How many are being built right now? Cleanview shows 572 buildings with work started on site. In megawatts, JLL puts North America's under-construction pipeline at 66 GW, 95% of it already pre-committed to a tenant. CBRE measured 7,481 MW under construction in its eight primary markets in the first half of 2026, up 24.8% in six months and above the previous high set in 2024.

If the terms here are new, start with our explainer on what a data center is.

Data Centers by State: The Top 20 Ranked

Virginia and Texas are far ahead of everyone else, and then the list drops off sharply. Pennsylvania in third place has 300 tracked buildings, about a third of Virginia's total.

Building counts come from Cleanview's US data center map and cover operating, under-construction and planned buildings together. Power figures are EPRI's 2023 estimates from its Powering Intelligence study, so the two columns are three years apart on purpose: one shows where companies are headed, the other where electricity was actually going. Cleanview's state figures add up to slightly more than its national total, so use them for ranking, not for arithmetic. And don't read much into ranks 5 through 10: the gaps are small and every tracker draws the lines a little differently.

A few states that dominate the news sit lower than you would expect. Louisiana has 42 tracked buildings, Wisconsin 30, Florida 25 and Michigan 20. A count that small suggests the headlines about Michigan and Wisconsin are mostly about proposals and local fights, not finished buildings. Louisiana's low count also undersells it: JLL names Louisiana among the frontier markets that hold most of the capacity under development.

Virginia, Texas, Georgia and Ohio: What Is Different in Each

The leading growth states look alike on a map and very different up close. Virginia is mature and full, Texas is huge and still mostly planned, and Ohio and Georgia are writing their rules as they go.

Virginia: the full market

Northern Virginia held 4,496.5 MW of data center inventory in the first half of 2026, after adding more than 1 GW in a year. Vacancy fell to 0.2% from 0.7% a year earlier, and available capacity was 10.8 MW. Net absorption of 467.6 MW was the highest of any primary North American market, according to CBRE's H1 2026 data center trends release.

"Power is the deciding factor in Northern Virginia right now." (Stu Dyer, Executive Vice President, CBRE Data Center Solutions Group, Sep 2026)

JLL calls it the world's largest single data center market, at nearly 7 GW of inventory (JLL and CBRE draw the market boundary differently). The state paid for that position: Virginia gave up about $1.6 billion in sales and use tax revenue to data center exemptions in fiscal 2025, a 118% rise on the year before, according to its annual financial report. Its own legislative auditors found data centers support 74,000 jobs and add $9.1 billion to state GDP.

Texas: the biggest pipeline

Texas has 26 GW of existing and under-construction capacity, twice Virginia's 13 GW, according to JLL. It also has 815 tracked buildings, and EPRI estimated its 2023 data center load at 21.8 TWh, or 4.59% of the state's electricity. Texas has the most growth in absolute terms, and it changed its grid rules the most. Senate Bill 6, signed in June 2025, applies to loads of 75 MW or more on the ERCOT grid. Large non-critical loads must accept curtailment during firm load shed events, new connections need shutoff equipment, and developers pay a $100,000 minimum interconnection fee and must disclose duplicate requests elsewhere in Texas.

That last rule targets what Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, called "the phantom load challenge associated with the interconnection queue": projects that sit in line without ever being built. Our guide to data centers in Texas covers the 474 GW ERCOT queue, the 2026 pause and the cost of the tax break.

Georgia and Arizona: the Sun Belt hubs

Georgia has 251 tracked buildings and used 6.2 TWh in 2023, or 4.26% of its electricity, concentrated around Atlanta. Arizona has 208 buildings and a higher share of its grid, 7.43%, around Phoenix. Both are growing fast because land is available and the utilities are willing to connect large loads. Arizona has a constraint Virginia does not: water, in a desert. For the cooling side of that trade-off, see our guide to data center cooling.

Ohio and Pennsylvania: big on paper, small on the meter

Pennsylvania has 300 tracked buildings and Ohio has 278, yet in 2023 they used just 4.6 TWh and 2.4 TWh (1.58% of Ohio's electricity). Both are pipeline states. AEP Ohio reported more than 30 GW of data center requests in its queue from over 50 customers at more than 90 sites, none of them confirmed agreements.

In July 2025 the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved a tariff that makes new loads above 25 MW pay for at least 85% of their subscribed capacity whether they use it or not, for up to 12 years.

"Today's order represents a well-balanced package that safeguards non-data center customers." (Jenifer French, Chair, Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Jul 2025)

On May 27, 2026, Governor Mike DeWine paused new applications for Ohio's data center sales tax exemption. Good Jobs First estimated the break cost the state more than $1.5 billion in 2025, about 11 times the state's $136 million forecast. Projects already approved keep theirs. Our guide to data centers in Ohio covers AEP Ohio's 17.9 GW pipeline and the November 2026 local ballot results.

How Much Electricity Do Data Centers Use in Each State?

Data centers used 176 TWh of electricity in 2023, or 4.4% of all US consumption, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory expects 325 to 580 TWh by 2028. That range is 6.7% to 12.0% of projected US demand, or a continuous load of 74 to 132 GW.

The use is lopsided, and it always has been. EPRI estimates that 15 states accounted for about 80% of national data center load in 2023, in this order: Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Oregon, Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Nebraska, North Dakota and Nevada.

Source: EPRI, Powering Intelligence, May 2024. The 2030 columns apply national growth scenarios to each state's 2023 load, so treat them as scenarios, not forecasts. In the highest-growth scenario EPRI puts Virginia's share at almost 50%, and about 36% averaged across all four.

The Number Most Guides Don't Show

Count buildings per terawatt-hour and the leaderboard turns upside down. Divide each state's tracked buildings (Cleanview, November 2026) by its 2023 data center electricity use (EPRI):

Ohio has about 4.7 times as many tracked buildings per unit of 2023 demand as Virginia. The mismatch tells you something. Most of Virginia's buildings existed by 2023, so its power use already reflects them. Most of Ohio's did not, so its meter has not caught up yet. Meanwhile Oregon, with half of Ohio's building count, used 2.7 times Ohio's electricity.

One more figure falls out of EPRI's own table. Its 15 leading states used about 126.6 TWh in 2023, and EPRI says that was about 80% of the national total. Virginia's 33.9 TWh is therefore roughly one-fifth of all US data center load, from a state with about 2.6% of the US population. That is our arithmetic from EPRI's numbers, not a published EPRI statistic, but it shows how concentrated the industry is.

We cover how those terawatt-hours turn into costs and carbon in our breakdown of AI data center power consumption.

Why Data Centers Are Moving Beyond Virginia

Builders are moving to Texas, Ohio, Louisiana and the Carolinas because Northern Virginia has almost nothing left to lease and AI campuses need far more power than any one site there can supply. JLL's midyear 2026 report says "frontier" markets, including West Texas, Ohio, Louisiana and the Carolinas, hold 77% of all capacity under development.

JLL counted 25 GW of absorption in the first half of 2026, double the year-earlier level, with vacancy at 1% for the third year running. Hyperscalers took 59% of 2026 tenant demand, neoclouds 11% and pure-play AI companies 7%. Neoclouds are the GPU-rental specialists that sit between the chip makers and AI companies.

"The geographic transformation of this industry continues its rapid evolution." (Sean Farney, Vice President, Data Center Strategy, JLL, Aug 2026)

Why does AI change the map? A traditional cloud facility draws tens of megawatts. A single AI training campus can ask a utility for several hundred, and it wants them on a set date, not eventually. The things that built Northern Virginia, fiber and nearby customers, matter less for model training than a substation with room to spare. Inference, the part of AI you actually use, still benefits from sitting close to customers and networks, so the old hubs stay busy even as training moves out.

The squeeze is not easing. CBRE says only about 1,500 MW is available for preleasing across its eight primary markets, roughly six months of supply at current demand.

"Even with 66 gigawatts under construction, we're likely to see vacancy remain near zero through 2028." (Andrew Batson, Global Head of Data Center Market Intelligence, JLL, Aug 2026)

That is why a state's rank can change faster than its permits. One utility saying yes to a 1 GW request can move a state up the capacity table overnight, and a utility saying no can leave it behind for years.

What States Are Doing: Tax Breaks, Tariffs, Pauses and Moratoriums

States are shifting from recruiting data centers to charging them. The main tools are tariffs that make big users pay for the grid they need, curtailment rules, pauses on tax breaks and, in a few places, moratoriums on new projects.

Tax breaks came first. Virginia is one of 36 states that offer data center sales tax exemptions. Its version requires $150 million in capital investment and 50 new jobs, which is a low bar for a modern hyperscale campus. Critics and supporters read those figures very differently.

"Virginia is losing control of its spending by enacting virtually automatic sales and use tax exemptions." (Greg LeRoy, Executive Director, Good Jobs First, quoted in The Register, Jan 2026)

"Datacenters offer the Commonwealth of Virginia a significant return on investment." (Ali Ahmad, Deputy Chief of Staff, Commonwealth of Virginia, quoted in The Register, Jan 2026)

The newer tools go after the power bill instead. Texas SB 6 and the AEP Ohio tariff, described above, are the best-known examples. PJM's independent market monitor, which covers Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a dozen other states, estimated that forecast data center demand raised wholesale power costs by $11.11 per megawatt-hour, about 9.7% of the total, in the first half of 2026. Who pays for new generation and transmission is now the main fight in every statehouse where data centers are growing.

Moratoriums are rarer than the headlines suggest, and you should check the legal status of each one before relying on it.

• Maine: the legislature passed a statewide moratorium on data centers above 20 MW, and Governor Janet Mills vetoed it on April 24, 2026, signing a bill that bars data center projects from the state's business development tax incentives instead.
• New York: the legislature passed a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale permits in June 2026. Governor Kathy Hochul signed a separate executive order on July 14, 2026 that pauses state environmental permits for hyperscale projects for up to a year. Coverage in July described the legislature's bill as still unsigned.
• Ohio: a pause on new tax-exemption applications, not on building.
• Local moratoriums in counties and towns are far more common than statewide ones.

State incentives and rules change month to month, so check the current status of any specific bill before quoting it.

How to Read a US Data Center Map (and Why Two Maps Disagree)

Two data center maps usually disagree because one counts buildings and the other counts campuses, or because one includes planned sites and the other does not. Before you trust any map of US data centers, including any AI data center locations map, check three things.

• The stage. Does the dot mean operating, under construction, planned or rumored? On Cleanview's list, 57% of the dots are planned.
• The unit. A building, a campus and a company announcement are different things. One campus can contain a dozen buildings.
• The power figure. A project's megawatts can mean design capacity, contracted capacity, interconnection capacity or maximum load. Actual consumption can be lower and phased in over years.

Three mistakes come up again and again.

The state with the most facilities does not necessarily use the most power. One hyperscale campus can draw more than dozens of small enterprise sites. California, with 113 tracked buildings, used about twice the electricity of Pennsylvania, with 300, in 2023.

Announced capacity is not operating capacity. Plenty of projects get shrunk, delayed or dropped while they wait for power lines, financing and permits.

Data centers are not interchangeable. An enterprise server room, a colocation hall and an AI campus differ in rack density, cooling and power draw, and a map that lumps them together will mislead you.

No tracker separates AI-only sites from general cloud sites, so "which state has the most AI data centers" has no clean answer. The nearest proxy is capacity under development. By that measure Texas leads, and Ohio, Louisiana and the Carolinas belong to the frontier group JLL names.

What to Watch in 2027

My expectation is that the capacity ranking keeps moving while the building-count ranking stays put. Virginia will probably keep the most operating sites for years, because no one can replicate Northern Virginia's network overnight. Texas will keep the most megawatts because its pipeline is the largest.

Three things will move the table over the next year.

• Power delivery. JLL's Andrew Batson expects near-zero vacancy through 2028, so any state that can energize a campus quickly gains share.
• Cost allocation rules. Tariffs like Ohio's and Texas's curtailment rules decide whether speculative projects survive. A developer who has to pay for 85% of reserved capacity files fewer duplicate requests.
• Political pressure. With tax-break pauses and moratorium bills spreading, the lowest-cost states of 2025 may not be the lowest-cost states of 2027.

The LBNL range of 325 to 580 TWh by 2028 is wide enough to hold two very different futures. Which one arrives depends largely on how many of the 2,609 planned buildings ever get built. For the environmental side of that question, see our analysis of the environmental impact of AI data centers.

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