TL;DR. The largest US tech companies are spending more than half a trillion dollars on AI data centers in 2026. Texas and Virginia lead the count, but two of the most consequential projects for our region are much closer to home: Microsoft announced in April 2026 that it intends to buy roughly 3,200 acres in and around Cheyenne, Wyoming for new data centers, and GlobalAI bought about 500 acres of the old Carestream / Kodak site in Weld County for $15.6 million. These projects bring real economic upside — and real concerns about power bills, water, land prices, and noise. Here is what is going up, what is changing locally, and what your business should know.
The nationwide picture: roughly $500 billion this year
Hyperscale tech companies have committed unprecedented sums to data-center build-out in 2026:
- Amazon Web Services — about $125 billion in AI infrastructure capex.
- Microsoft — about $115 billion, more than triple its 2023 spending.
- Alphabet (Google) — roughly $95 billion.
- Meta — roughly $80 billion.
- OpenAI and a long tail of smaller AI-infrastructure operators — tens of billions more, often in joint ventures with Nvidia.
As of early 2026, Texas has roughly 140 data centers under construction and Virginia has 136 — the only two states above 100. Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” alone hosts more than 500 facilities and is estimated to handle as much as 70% of global internet traffic. The US Department of Energy now projects that data centers will draw roughly 12% of all US electricity by 2028, up from about 4% in 2023. That demand is forcing utilities to delay coal-plant retirements, accelerate new natural-gas builds, and pencil out tens of billions in additional grid spend.
Cheyenne, Wyoming — an hour up I-25
On April 14, 2026 Microsoft announced its intent to acquire about 3,200 acres of land in the Cheyenne area to expand its existing data-center footprint — roughly 200 acres in Bison Business Park and another 3,000 acres in southeast Cheyenne. That is a tripling of Microsoft’s already-significant Cheyenne presence, and it is not the only one: Crusoe and Prometheus Hyperscale have additional Wyoming projects in motion, and the state pitched itself heavily to data-center developers at a closed-door summit in Jackson in March 2026.
What makes the Cheyenne project notable is the financing structure: Microsoft has agreed with Black Hills Energy that it will directly pay for the infrastructure upgrades and the power its load consumes, rather than rolling those costs into the general rate base that residential customers pay. That kind of ratepayer-protection deal is not yet standard everywhere, and it is a model worth watching as similar projects come up closer to us.
Closer to home: Northern Colorado and the Front Range
Colorado now lists 56 data-center facilities across five markets (Denver, Colorado Springs, Loveland/Fort Collins, Walsenburg, and a few smaller sites). Several major projects are either under construction or recently announced:
- GlobalAI — Weld County (the local one): in December 2025 a developer linked to GlobalAI purchased about 500 acres for $15.6 million at the former Carestream Health site — a property that traces back to Kodak and has been on the market since Carestream closed and laid off about 210 workers in 2024. The site sits in unincorporated Weld County and could be annexed into either Greeley or Windsor, a decision that determines where the property-tax revenue flows. The project is reportedly an “agnostic” multi-tenant AI data center, partnered with Nvidia and a Saudi firm called Uman. As of this writing the project is still early-stage with no formal land-use proposal filed.
- QTS Realty Trust — large hyperscale campus under construction in Aurora, east of Denver.
- Denver / Elyria-Swansea — a campus drawing up to 75 MW is under build-out, large enough that neighbors have already raised concerns about power and water.
- Flexential — a fourth Front Range data center under way in Parker.
- Crusoe — opening a “Spark Factory” in Brighton to manufacture pre-fabricated AI data-center modules, first units due Q3 2026.
Xcel Energy, the utility serving most of Colorado’s Front Range, has flagged roughly $22 billion in new infrastructure it expects to need to meet projected demand — much of it driven by data-center load.
Why local communities are paying attention
Data centers look like quiet warehouses from the outside, but a single hyperscale AI campus can draw the electricity of a city of a million people. The community concerns sort into five buckets:
1. Electricity costs
Across the US, average residential electricity prices reached about 19 cents per kWh by the end of 2025 — roughly 27% higher than 2019. Utilities filed for more than $29 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025 alone, double the prior year, much of it driven by interconnection requests from data centers. A Consumer Reports / Stateline survey found 78% of Americans are concerned that nearby data centers will push their bills up. Some utilities and states are responding with “data centers pay their own way” rate structures (the Microsoft / Black Hills Energy deal in Cheyenne is one example); others have not yet.
2. Water
Many large data centers cool with evaporative water systems, which can be very thirsty. AI data centers consumed roughly 17 billion gallons of water in 2023 and are projected at about 68 billion gallons by 2028. A single large facility can use 5 million gallons a day — the equivalent of a small town. Texas data centers are projected to use 49 billion gallons in 2025 and could approach 400 billion gallons by 2030. Two-thirds of US data centers built since 2022 are in water-stressed regions.
For Colorado the question is sharper. As of early April 2026 over 40% of Weld County was in severe drought and roughly 38% in extreme drought. Colorado has no statewide data-center water-reporting law — a bill that would have required it died in committee. Weld County’s April update to its county code defining where data centers can go was driven in part by water and drought concerns.
3. Land prices
Where data centers concentrate, land prices reorganize quickly. In Loudoun County, Virginia — the global epicenter — the average sale price per acre is now around $3.76 million, up roughly $1.4 million in a single year, and data-center land makes up about 26% of the county’s real-estate tax base. Agricultural land near hyperscale build-out corridors is selling for 5–10x its historical farm value. Effects on residential property values are mixed: some studies in Indiana found home values near data centers tracked the broader market, while a peer-reviewed projection in Georgia estimated a $118 million decline across nearby parcels. Outcomes depend heavily on siting, screening, and infrastructure.
4. Noise
The 24/7 mechanical hum from cooling towers and chillers is a significant complaint in the largest data-center clusters. Northern Virginia residents have reported continuous noise levels at 40–60 dB at the property line, with backup diesel generators reaching 105 dB when they run — comparable to a jet flying overhead. Reported health effects from chronic exposure include sleep disturbance, headaches, and elevated blood pressure. Loudoun County and other jurisdictions are now writing or revising noise ordinances specifically aimed at data-center cooling systems and on-site generators.
5. Jobs and tax tradeoffs
Construction phases of large data centers can employ hundreds for a year or two; ongoing operations typically employ dozens. Communities promised “hundreds of high-paying tech jobs” sometimes find the long-term reality is more modest. Virginia and Georgia have collectively forgone more than $1 billion a year in revenue through data-center sales-tax exemptions. Colorado does not yet have an equivalent statewide carve-out, and pending legislation (HB26-1030, co-sponsored by Sen. Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins) would tie any future incentives to renewable-energy commitments.
What this means for your business — even if you never log into a hyperscaler
It is tempting to file all of this under “big-company news” and move on. A few of the second-order effects do reach Front Range small businesses:
- Cloud and SaaS prices. Hyperscaler infrastructure costs are flowing through into cloud-storage tiers, compute rates, and SaaS pricing. Several major providers have already nudged prices up in 2026; budget accordingly.
- Hardware availability. The same factors driving the data-center build-out (chips, NAND, HBM, networking gear) are stretching lead times on the workstation, server, and switching hardware that small businesses buy — we wrote about the SSD side of that squeeze in a recent post.
- Power capacity, eventually. If a major data-center campus lands in our utility’s service area, the utility’s rate cases and capacity plans will reflect it. Commercial customers should expect demand-charge structures and time-of-use rates to keep evolving.
- Local economy. A 500-acre, multi-billion-dollar build-out next door changes the neighborhood — for construction trades, contractors, food service, and adjacent commercial real estate, in ways both good and complicated. Worth paying attention to whether you sell to those segments or not.
What InfiNet is watching
We are not advocating for or against any particular data-center project. As an IT services company in Northern Colorado we are watching:
- Whether the GlobalAI Weld County project actually breaks ground — and whether it lands in Greeley or Windsor.
- How the Microsoft – Black Hills Energy ratepayer-protection structure in Cheyenne plays out, and whether Xcel and Colorado regulators adopt anything similar.
- Xcel rate filings and how commercial demand charges evolve as data-center load comes online.
- Water-reporting and noise-ordinance proposals in Weld County, Greeley, Windsor, and at the state level.
- Hardware availability and pricing for the SMB-grade gear our clients depend on.
- State-level legislation (HB26-1030 and follow-ons) that could change the economics of building or operating data centers in Colorado.
If any of these affect a project of yours — an office build-out with significant power needs, a workload migration where cloud pricing matters, or a hardware refresh that bumps into supply lead times — we will let you know early. Send us a note or call 970-282-8838 if you want to think through any of it.