- AI data center power consumption will soon exceed the consumption of conventional data centers
- Global data center power consumption has risen by 26% since 2025
- In the US, AI data centers account for 36% of all data center power consumption
Data centers built to add capacity for AI will soon consume more power than conventional data center hardware. Consuming 175 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2026, predictions take that number to 258 TWh in 2027 – at which AI-optimized data centers will pass conventional data centers for consumption.
Compared to 2025, AI data center power consumption has increased by around 84%.These are the findings of a Gartner forecast that also predicts AI optimized servers to account for 31% of data center power consumption in 2026.
This level of consumption, combined with an excess in electricity demand compared to production, will be the main constraint on future AI expansion, Gartner predicts. But data center consumption as a whole is expected to be 565 TWh in 2026, a 26% increase year over year.
Consumption on the rise, but capacity is slow to expand
When it comes to global consumption, the US accounts for 36% or around 204 TWh of the full 565 TWh of global demand. Within that slice of US demand, AI data centers account for one third, with expected consumption for 2026 to be around 68 TWh.
“Surging demand for compute-intensive AI workloads is driving unprecedented data center power growth, while AI capacity is now constrained by power availability, making data center power security the new battle ground for scaling and protecting margins in the global AI race,” said Gartner’s Direct Analyst Linglan Wang.
By 2030, Garter predicts that supply will be unable to meet demand once consumption passes the 1,200 TWh mark.
In order to address this constraint, Wang suggested that business leaders and infrastructure providers should focus on upgrading the efficiency of power grids and the hardware that draws the most power such as cooling systems.
A recent Google Cloud report further suggested that to address the rising cost of power consumption, businesses should move from running AI models on a centralized cloud to edge deployments, where the efficiency of these systems is increased with the added benefit of avoiding a global outage of services if the centralized cloud system fails.
But these levels of consumption increase will hardly help to cool the rising anti-data center sentiment in the US, which—when combined with hardware and power production shortages—has seen nearly half of all data centers in 2026 delayed or cancelled.
Via Tom’s Hardware
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benedict.collins@futurenet.com (Benedict Collins)
