2025 has been a transformative year for data centre development. Shaped by the growth of AI deployments to new priorities in data centre site selection and power availability, the data centre industry is having to adapt at a rapid pace.
In this blog, Head of Technical Due-Diligence, Mark Acton, explores the key factors that impacted data centre development during 2025.
Boom of AI Infrastructure
The most significant data centre development impacts during 2025 have been related to the boom deployments. The level of investment in this area has risen steadily over the last 12 months with significantly less activity in the early part of the year rising sharply to the current peak.
This has been driven by large scale AI GPU based infrastructure deployment plans, caused by a desire to achieve first-mover advantage as well as a sharp rise in the desire for both sovereign AI and sovereign Cloud.
Changes to Data Centre Site Selection
AI infrastructure has also resulted in a change of focus in terms of data centre site selection criteria. Previously the availability of power was the was the key criteria for data centre site selection, but the capacity available could be progressively developed over time. During 2025 this has changed to immediate requirements for power. Power, now, is the mantra, rather than confirmed power in the future.
As a result, site selection has evolved to highlight those sites that have significant power capacity immediately available with the capacity requirements increasing to 50MVA or more. This has led to an interest in former industrial locations with existing under-utilised power infrastructure already available.
Demand for Immediate Power Availability
The interest in immediate power availability has also been exacerbated by the concern shown by grid operators in multiple countries about the amount of power being demanded by data centre operators, and their concerns about both the generation capacity, but more specifically the ability of the transmission network to cope with the additional loads and demands predicted. Many European countries are now evaluating their provisioning process and investment plans based on predicted future data centre demand, including the UK.
What will be the key data centre discussions during 2026?
The demand for immediate power availability is likely to continue to remain a key factor in the data centre industry well into 2026. with the immediacy of large capacity power availability being the driver for significant elements of both investment and growth within the data centre sector for the next few months.
Stay ahead of the curve in 2026 and get in touch with our data centre specialists.