Tech companies have invested so much money in building data centers in recent months, it’s actively driving the US economy—and the AI race is showing no signs of slowing down. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg told President Donald Trump last week that the company would spend $600 billion on US infrastructure—including data centers—by 2028, while OpenAI has committed already to spending $1.4 trillion.
An extensive new analysis looks at the environmental footprint of data centers in the US to get a handle on what, exactly, the country might be facing as this buildout continues over the next few years—and where the US should be building data centers to avoid the most