Synergy Research Group has disclosed that the total capacity on offer from the world’s hyperscale data centres has doubled over the past four years and is set to do so again over the next four years, primarily to support growing demand related to generative AI (GenAI) workloads.

    
New data collated by the research firm showed that the number of large hyperscale data centres in operation worldwide hit 992 at the end of 2023 and passed the 1,000 mark early this year. Not only that but the capacity of those data centres has been increasing, and there’s more to come.
    
According to Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group, John Dinsdale, said:  “Despite the super-massive size of the datacentre network, its capacity is doubling every four years, it expects that growth rate will continue throughout the rest of the decade. While there are many different deployment scenarios at play, in aggregate the average capacity of hyperscale datacentres continues to grow.”
    
The company’s forecast further suggests that in the next five years, there will be around 120 to 130 additional hyperscale data centres coming online per year, while capacity growth is expected to be driven increasingly by the even larger scale of newly opened data centres.
    
This will mainly be due to generative AI (GenAI) technology, according to Synergy’s findings. The company bases its forecast on the future data centre plans of the hyperscale operators – currently, 440 new facilities are at various stages of being planned, developed or fitted out.
     
The U.S. accounted for more than half (51 per cent) of the world’s total hyperscale datacentre capacity – measured by megawatt (MW) of critical IT load – at the end of last year. Europe and China followed, with each of them representing around a third of the balance (17 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively).
   
Within the U.S., the “state of Virginia alone accounts for a third of US capacity,” noted Dinsdale in comments shared by email with journalists. “Outside of the US, the next biggest countries ranked by megawatt of critical IT load are China, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Netherlands and Australia,” he added.