Infrastructure investors and lenders committed record amounts of capital to the data center sector in 2025 and there’s still plenty of room to run, according to a report from real estate company JLL.

The firm’s report, 2026 Global Data Center Outlook: Navigating AI demand, power constraints and global opportunities in 2026, highlights the enormity of capital that will be required to develop and build data centers and related infrastructure not just in 2026 but in the years to come.

JLL concurs with other market participants that the sector is currently in an “infrastructure investment supercycle,” which will require up to USD 3tn in investment by 2030. Broken down, that will comprise USD 1.2tn in real‑estate asset value creation, approximately USD 870bn in new debt financing, plus USD 1tn–USD 2tn of tenant IT fit‑out for GPUs, networking, etc.

Capital needed to scale further

Overall, JLL anticipates that nearly 100 GW of new data center capacity will come online between 2026–2030, with growth led by hyperscale, colocation and on‑prem segments. The scale and pace of builds are driving consolidation and raising barriers to entry.

Senior Managing Director and Head of Data Center Capital Markets at JLL Carl Beardsley told this publication that beyond the scale of the build-out, the speed with which developers need to source and deploy capital is creating complex dynamics.

“The life cycle of needing capital is pushing up with utilities, et cetera, to maintain time frames so developers can hit milestones for the tenants,” he said. “A lot of the capital is needed earlier in the cycle. Many of the projects aren’t colocation multi-tenant buildings anymore, they’re not only single buildings, but multiple buildings leased at once. So, quickly after needing that first tranche of capital, you need the full build-out which equates from like USD 12m to USD 14m per megawatt to build out your campus.”

Developers have to act fast to advance projects past the load impact study stage with utilities. Utilities are combating a flood of load impact studies and have been forced to instill checks and balances to tackle the unprecedented amount of volume.

The process can be cumbersome and requires a lot more money, as some utilities are requesting deposits to advance to the second part of the study. “It’s very hard to put this capital out when you don’t have an answer that soon in the process. The second challenge is the utilities are putting in a shot clock. It might be 60, 90 days, ‘Okay, here’s your results. If you don’t pay the next big deposit, you’re out.’ So, it’s very challenging to line up an off-taker, or flip land, or sell land when you get basically the answers to what your site has and then have a shot clock of 60 to 90 days to do something with it,” Beardsley said. On top of that short window, many utilities are also doing take-or-pay contracts where users pay for the power whether they use it or not.

“The call we get the most is a very experienced individual or firm that may not have the pockets to put capital out that soon in the [development] cycle,” Beardsley notes. “The sooner you bring the capital in, the more upside you’re giving away and control you’re giving away. It’s a balancing act. There are two levels of risk that equity solves for: power risk and tenant lease-up risk. If equity groups are coming in before you have confirmed power, they’re coming in at the original land basis, the raw land basis, and any upside, they’re sharing with the data center. The groups that can get through at least the power procurement stage are open to more options, either debt or equity, to get to the next stage to get your tenant.”

M&A consolidation and exit strategies

In the report, JLL predicts that following a wave of platform consolidation that has seen USD 300bn of capital flowing into the market through M&A, future activity will tilt toward recapitalizations, partial interest transactions, and PropCo joint ventures, allowing developers to unlock capital for new developments and early entrants to exit positions. The peak of the consolidation wave so far is the USD 40bn deal that BlackRock’s GIP led for Macquarie’s Aligned Data Centers, a platform boasting 50 campuses and over 5 GW of capacity, which is yet to close. “Developers will need additional capital to fund new developments. And separately, investors who established positions early in the cycle will be looking to exit, generating an increase in core trades,” the report states.

One of the report’s recommendations for investors is: “Plan exits earlier via recaps,” with JLL predicting that “partial liquidity events may outperform full asset sales.”

Beardsley highlighted how important it is for companies with large and growing data center portfolios to consider early their capital recycling and exit strategies so as not to scale themselves beyond the reaches of the market.

“It doesn’t take too long before you’ve got a USD 10bn company. It could be you’ve got a handful of fully built out data centers with long term leases with credit attached. There’s going to be more consolidation as things scale up. Getting from a USD 10bn company up to USD 20bn might require a recap too as maybe your equity partner can’t scale on this level,” he said. “Everything’s going to scale up even more and the biggest groups out there are going to have more market share in three years versus today because they’ll continue to buy up groups.”

Room for more developers

AI workloads and high-powered compute take up a lot of space in the conversation around data center markets. Hyperscalers occupy more than 50% of all global data center space, according to JLL. “These companies are some of the most profitable enterprises in the world, with strong balance sheets and stellar credit ratings. Their leases are often for 10 years or more, with backstops providing security to landlords in case of default.”

However, hyperscale build-outs are not the only game in town. The Outlook report highlights how by 2030, annual sales of modular systems and micro data centers could reach USD 48bn, marking a shift in the industry from build-to-suit development to assemble-at-scale.

Larger data center builders won’t necessarily squeeze out smaller and more recent market entrants though. “There’s definitely capital out there for more, younger groups that haven’t matured,” Beardsley added. “As your company grows, backers will write USD 100m, USD 200m checks. That might get your first smaller data center out of the ground and then as you keep scaling, you’re going to have to get different equity groups to come in. It just depends how big you want to be.”