Meta, Palantir, Amazon Are All-In On AI—Can Datacenters Keep Up?

A global buildout of datacenter infrastructure is charging ahead to meet the immense computing power needed for AI ambitions by tech giants like Meta Platforms Inc. META, Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and others.

Goldman Sachs now expects global datacenter demand to soar 50% by 2027, setting the stage for a massive expansion in power generation and infrastructure investment across the AI value chain.

In a note shared this week, the firm analyst James Schneider projected that global datacenter demand will jump from 62 gigawatts (GW) in the second half of 2025 to 92 GW by 2027—a 50% increase in just over two years. AI workloads are expected to drive that growth, expanding their share of total demand from 13% to 28% by 2027, while traditional workloads shrink to 21%.

Overall, Goldman expects global datacenter power demand to rise 165% by 2030, a shift so large that, if isolated, it would place datacenters among the world's top 10 electricity consumers.

Can Supply Keep Up?

Datacenter supply is projected to grow nearly as fast, with global capacity rising from 68 GW today to 137 GW by 2030—a 15% compound annual growth rate.

But power constraints are looming. In the U.S., where datacenters already consume 4% of electricity, Goldman forecasts that share to more than double by the end of the decade.

Meeting that power need will require 72 GW of new generation capacity, with 25%-30% likely coming from solar and 30% each from combined-cycle and peaker natural gas plants.

Adding momentum to the datacenter arms race, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently posted on Threads that the company is building two multi-gigawatt AI clusters: Prometheus, a 1 GW supercluster expected in 2026, and Hyperion, which could deliver at least 5 GW of compute capacity by 2030.

"We’re… going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence," Zuckerberg wrote.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said the statement "signals to the Street that the AI capex cycle is far from over." Post raised his 2026 Meta capex estimate by $6 billion and now expects $229 billion in total capex spend from 2025 to 2027.

Who Benefits From The Datacenter Boom?

According to Goldman, datacenter operators such as Digital Realty Trust Inc. DLR and Equinix Inc. EQIX are positioned to sustain profitability above historic levels. The tight supply-demand balance also benefits infrastructure and industrial players.

Cummins Inc. CMI now sees 35% of its power generation sales linked to datacenters, while Caterpillar Inc. CAT generates about $2.8 billion annually from the segment. Together, they’re projected to supply 6–7 GW in backup generator capacity this year.

Jabil Inc. JBL raised its fiscal 2025 AI-related revenue forecast to $8.5 billion, up from $7.5 billion in the prior quarter, citing strong demand and near-peak utilization at some factories.

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