• There are now more than 1,100 hyperscale datacentres around the world, with most of capacity in the US, according to Synergy Research Group
• Another 500 are either being built or are planned to come online over the next four years
• Total hyperscale datacentre capacity is set to double during that same time period, with generative AI (GenAI) driving demand

The number of large datacentre facilities run by hyperscale companies had increased to 1,136 by the end of 2024, with 137 new facilities coming online over the course of that year, and another 500 hyperscale facilities in the pipeline, Synergy Research Group has found.  

According to the analyst firm’s criteria, there are 19 cloud and internet services companies that are classified as hyperscalers, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google being the largest. The total number of large datacentres run by these companies has doubled over the past five years, as the chart above shows. 

And that pace of growth is set to be maintained, with the Synergy Research team expecting about the same number of new hyperscale facilities to be added to the total each year for the next four years.

And it’s not only the number of these facilities that is growing: According to Synergy Research, it has taken less than four years for the total capacity of operational hyperscale datacentres to double (as the average capacity of newly opened facilities continues to climb) and the company forecasts it will take less than four years for total hyperscale datacentre capacity (measured by MW of critical IT load) to double once again. “Overall capacity growth will be driven more by the ever-larger scale of the newly opened datacentres,” with generative AI (GenAI) technology “a prime reason for that increased scale” – see Cloud services sector topped $330bn in 2024.

John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, noted: “Historically the average size of new datacentres was increasing gradually, but this trend has become supercharged in the last few quarters as companies build out AI-oriented infrastructure… the trend towards increased size is very clear. It is also very clear that the US will continue to dwarf all other countries and regions as the main home for hyperscale infrastructure.”

As the chart above shows, US facilities currently account for more than half of the world’s total hyperscale datacentre capacity. The companies with the broadest datacentre footprint are the leading cloud providers – Amazon, Microsoft and Google – each of which has a huge datacentre footprint in the US, as well as multiple hyperscale facilities in other regions around the world. 

According to Synergy Research, the next biggest hyperscalers are Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Apple and ByteDance. 

Dinsdale expects the US to continue to account for more than half of the global capacity over the next five years and he doesn’t expect the trend for ongoing major hyperscale investments to wane. “There is some commentary out there about a potential oversupply of datacentres,” he stated in comments emailed to the media. “There will always be cases where some investors and builders don’t get it right, but the overall story is one of continued aggressive growth in operational datacentre capacity,” he added.

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV