A Southern state just took the top spot in one of the world’s fastest-growing industries

DALLAS – North Texas has beaten some of the world’s biggest data center hubs to claim the No. 1 spot in a new global ranking, as Texas becomes an increasingly powerful player in the industry.

Dallas ranked No. 1 in the 2026 Global Data Center Market Comparison by Cushman & Wakefield, a global commercial real estate services firm. The Lone Star State made a strong showing across the board, with Austin-San Antonio and West Texas also ranking first in their respective categories.

The rankings underscore how quickly Texas has become a major destination for data center development as companies search for the land and electricity needed to support artificial intelligence and other computing. Cushman & Wakefield said the state is growing at a pace that could eventually match, or surpass, Virginia, the world’s largest data center market by operating capacity.

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Dallas isn’t the world’s largest data center market. Despite Dallas’ No. 1 ranking, Virginia remains the world’s largest data center market based on the amount of capacity already in operation.

Cushman & Wakefield’s ranking, however, looks beyond sheer size to where the industry is positioned to grow. The commercial real estate services firm compared 107 markets on factors including access to power and land, projects under construction, existing infrastructure and the regulatory environment.

Dallas has one of the largest pipelines of planned data center development, trailing only Virginia and Atlanta, according to the report. And that development is spreading across Texas.

Cushman & Wakefield said activity has pushed outward from the long-established Dallas-Fort Worth market as companies search for vast amounts of land and electricity needed to support AI and other computing. At the current pace, the firm said Texas could eventually match or surpass Virginia in total data center capacity.

Texas has several advantages in that race, including abundant land, a business-friendly environment, an independent and deregulated power grid and incentives for development, according to the report.

The rapid growth has also drawn political attention, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pressing data centers to provide more of their own power and cover infrastructure costs as development accelerates across the state.

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The scale of that growth is also putting pressure on Texas’ resources.

Water availability is becoming a concern in West Texas and the Panhandle, while the enormous amount of electricity needed for new data centers is putting greater focus on the state’s power supply. Texas has also adopted new rules requiring some large electricity users to share infrastructure costs and account for their impact on grid reliability.

Finding enough power is an industry-wide problem.

Cushman & Wakefield said electricity is now the top consideration when companies choose where to build, with utilities taking an average of 4.4 years to connect large new projects to the grid. Those waits are prompting some developers to secure or generate power themselves.

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Texas may already be home to the world’s top-ranked data center market, but staying on top could come down to whether the state can provide enough power for what comes next.