US now has 5,388 data centres globally, India likely to be next surge
New Delhi: With the growing trend of cloud and AI adoption driving demand for more data centres, India is set for a data centre boom, according to data released on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the United States currently leads the global chart with 5,388 data centres, 10 times more than China and most European countries. According to data presented by Stocklytics.com, the US has 70 per cent more than the next 10 largest data centre markets combined. In second place is Germany, which has 520 data centres, followed by the UK, which has 512 such facilities. China is fourth in the global data centre landscape with 449 listed data centres. Canada, France and Australia are next with 336, 315 and 307 data centres, respectively.
Japan is the last country in the top 10 list, with 219 operational data centres, according to CloudScene data. The surge of AI technologies, which require significant computing power and storage, has fueled a data center boom, pushing the market up by 52 percent since 2017 to a value of $416 billion. The global data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.45 percent over the next years and become a half-trillion-dollar industry by 2027. According to Statista Market Insights, the US data center market will generate $120 billion in 2024 or nearly 30 percent of the total market revenue. India is rapidly catching up with the global data center market. The country has the potential to add 500 megawatts of additional data center capacity over the next four years. The data center sector is set to double from 540 megawatts in 2019 to 1,011 megawatts in 2023, making India one of the fastest-growing markets globally. Expected to grow at a CAGR of 26 per cent over the next three years, the sector is attracting considerable attention from a wide range of investors, ranging from growth stage private equity (PE) to long-term pension and sovereign wealth funds. According to Savills India, India witnessed a 21 per cent growth in data centre absorption in the first half of this year as edge data centre demand grew from tier 2 and 3 cities.