Data Centers Are Eating Construction Pipelines

Commercial builders want to build data centers and little else. According to some recent data, the appetite for traditional office, multifamily, retail, and even warehouse projects is drying up in boardrooms and bid rooms across the country, while data center projects are capturing the majority of new development pipelines. Data center development spending in the United States topped $43.8 billion through October 2025, more than double the previous year, and roughly eight times what it was in 2023, a clear sign of where capital and labor are heading.

The drivers are structural. Data center development, particularly for large artificial intelligence workloads, has become one of the few parts of the real estate economy with clear demand growth. Developers and contractors repeatedly report that data center work outpaces all other sectors by a wide margin, with a net positive outlook in construction activity several times stronger than for traditional commercial types...