One thing that strikes me looking at this map is how quickly the limiting factor for AI infrastructure has shifted from network proximity to energy logistics. It’s a power development race.
For years the gravitational center of the market was determined by fiber density and proximity to major internet exchanges. That’s how Northern Virginia became the dominant hub. Now the gating factor is how fast utilities can deliver large blocks of power and scale them.
That’s why we’re seeing aggressive movement into places like Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. These markets still have the three things hyperscalers can’t easily find in saturated hubs:
• scalable land
• utilities willing to partner on large infrastructure builds
• grids with room to grow
The real competitive advantage going forward won’t just be connectivity. It will be who can plan, permit, and deliver power infrastructure at hyperscale speed. States that can align utilities, transmission planning, permitting, and land assembly are suddenly competitive almost overnight.
The interesting question for me is what happens next:
Will these locations evolve into full digital infrastructure ecosystems like Northern Virginia did, or will they function more like specialized AI training corridors connected back to existing network hubs?
Either way, the speed at which entirely new markets like Texas and Louisiana have appeared is a strong signal that the next decade of data center geography will be defined less by where the internet already lives and more by where the grid can scale.