‘Cloud had a transformative impact on the world of IT; generative AI is having an even bigger impact,’ says Synergy Research Group’s John Dinsdale regarding the spike in hyperscale data centers.
There are now approximately 1,300 large data centers operated by hyperscale providers across the globe with Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft leading the way—as the three big cloud leaders currently own more than half of all data center capacity.
With AWS, Microsoft and Google all based in America, the U.S.’s share of total worldwide hyperscale capacity now stands at 55 percent.
“The growth in metrics has been particularly strong since ChatGPT was launched at the end of 2022 and AI fever took hold,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, in an email to CRN. “Since then, both quarterly hyperscale capex and the amount of capacity added each quarter have ballooned.”
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“Cloud had a transformative impact on the world of IT; generative AI is having an even bigger impact,” said Dinsdale.
AWS, Microsoft And Google Own 58 Precent Of Global Capacity
The three cloud computing and AI leaders currently account for 58 percent of all hyperscale data center capacity on a worldwide basis.
After AWS, Microsoft and Google, the companies that own the most data center capacity are Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Oracle, Apple and TikTok owner ByteDance.
The number of large data centers operated by hyperscale providers has nearly tripled since 2018.
“Since 2018, the number of operational hyperscale data centers has grown almost threefold, the total amount of operational capacity has grown over fourfold, and the amount of capacity added each quarter has grown fivefold,” said Dinsdale.
770 New Hyperscale Data Centers Ahead
Synergy said its known pipeline of future hyperscale data centers currently stands at 770 facilities, which are at various stages of being planned, constructed or designed.
“In Q3 [2025] nearly all key hyperscale year-on-year growth metrics increased,” said Dinsdale. “Growth rates rose for data center openings, megawatts of operational capacity, data center-related capex, company revenues, and cloud-specific revenues.”
Dinsdale said Synergy is projecting total hyperscale data center capacity to double in just over 12 quarters. “[This underscores] the scale and speed at which AI-driven infrastructure investment is reshaping global cloud-related markets.”
Synergy Research Group’s market report is based on an analysis of the data center footprint of 21 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, search, social media, e-commerce and gaming.
