Billions for new data centres - thanks to artificial intelligence

Düsseldorf. The boom in artificial intelligence (AI) is leading to a massive increase in investment in data centres - including in Germany. This is shown by the analysis a study published on Monday by the Borderstep Institute. According to the technology association Bitkom, operators will invest around twelve billion euros in IT hardware this year and a further 3.5 billion euros in buildings as well as energy and air conditioning technology.

Bitkom expects the strong expansion to continue in the coming years. The connected load of all data centres is expected to almost double to 4.85 gigawatts between 2024 and 2030. Systems with special chips for AI applications are particularly in demand; their share is expected to rise from around 15 per cent at present to 40 per cent.

The major cloud providers are a key driver. According to Bitkom, cloud infrastructures account for around 45 per cent of existing capacity. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is currently expanding its data centres in the Frankfurt region in order to meet rising customer demand. A total of 8.8 billion euros has been earmarked for this by 2026.

At the same time, AWS is building a "European Sovereign Cloud" in Brandenburg to give customers more control over their data. The service is set to launch at the end of the year. The company has founded an independent operating company with European staff and its own security centre for this purpose. According to AWS, it plans to invest 7.8 billion euros by 2040.

Microsoft is building a new data centre in the Rhineland and plans to invest a total of 3.2 billion euros in expanding its infrastructure. Google has announced that it will present its largest investment plan for Germany to date in the course of the week. Deutsche Telekom is expanding a data centre in Munich to include special AI chips and is investing around one billion euros in the project.

Despite the pace of construction, Germany is losing ground internationally. Significantly larger capacities are being built in the USA and China. OpenAI, for example, wants to invest 100 billion dollars in data centres in the coming years. Just last week, the company announced that it would purchase computing power worth 38 billion dollars from AWS over seven years.

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