Future of Data Centres
A Strategic Foresight and Market Report
For most of their history, data centres were built to be ignored. They sat at the edge of town, windowless and unmarked, quietly running the software the modern world had come to depend on. And now, that anonymity is gone. In the space of a few years, data centres have become the most fought-over infrastructure of the age, the physical foundation on which artificial intelligence, and increasingly the economy itself, is being built.
One word captures why: power. Data centres are now a matter of political power, deciding which nations lead in AI and which depend on others. They are also an extraordinary draw on electrical power, consuming more energy each year than entire countries and straining grids that were never designed for them. Around these has formed a third meaning: the economic power of the capital flooding into the sector, the largest infrastructure build-out of the digital era, and the unresolved question of whether it will pay off.
This report examines four themes: the new geography of compute, the race to power the machine, the technological frontiers reshaping the infrastructure itself, and the economics of a boom whose foundations are still being tested. Drawing on current market intelligence and longer-horizon foresight, it traces where each is heading, and what it will take for organisations to build, invest and compete in a world where compute is power.
Download the report
What’s inside the report?
The report is organised around four thematic chapters, with each chapter presenting both current market indicators and longer-term foresight analysis.
1. The New Geography of Compute
Compute is becoming a map of power. The Gulf is making a bid to become a third compute pole, while export controls and supply chokepoints determine who can build, who can buy and who must depend on others. This chapter examines where data centres are being built, who controls them, and what the redrawing of that map means for sovereignty, supply chains and long-range strategy.
2. Powering the Machine
Energy, water and heat have become the hard limit on growth. Data centres are drawing on grids never designed for them, and the answers now being tested range from small modular reactors to orbital data centres. This chapter examines the resource constraints that will decide how far and how fast the build-out can go.
3. Technological Frontiers
The infrastructure itself is being rebuilt. Quantum computing, new forms of data storage and next-generation connectivity such as 6G are reshaping what a data centre is, while compute spreads across a continuum from hyperscale facilities to the edge. This chapter traces which of these shifts are near-term realities and which remain long-horizon bets.
4. The Economics of Compute
The capital flooding into the sector has funded the largest infrastructure build-out of the digital era, and its fragility is easy to overlook. This chapter follows the money, weighing the investment against the risk that much of it has been misallocated, and traces what that would mean for those exposed to the outcome.
