45.6% of the world's data centers are located in the United States. In 2030, they will consume 8% of the country's electricity

The rapid development of the AI market requires not only more semiconductors but also a much larger number of data centers. Visual Capitalist has prepared an interesting infographic on the number and location of global data centers, referring to Statista analytics from October 2024.

Statista's data, in turn, reflects the situation as of March 2024. Although a certain number of new data centers were supposed to open since then, this is not really a fast process (the construction of a new data center can take more than a year), and the overall picture should remain the same, as almost all countries have joined the AI boom.

Thus, according to Statista, as of March 2024, there are 11,800 data centers in the world, most of which, 45.6%, are in the United States. The second and third cities lag far behind, with Germany and the UK accounting for only 4.4% of the world's data center "park". In Ukraine, Statista counted only 58 data centers, but our country is ranked 25th in the world.

Top 10 countries by number of data centers

1. USA – 5 381

2. Germany – 521

3. United Kingdom – 514

4. China – 449

5. Canada – 336

6. France – 315

7. Australia – 307

8. Netherlands – 297

9. Russia – 251

10. Japan – 219

...

25. Ukraine – 58

AI fever and new data center capacities lead to an increase in energy consumption, among other things. Processing an average ChatGPT query requires 10 times more electricity than processing a regular Google search query, which was once criticized for being wasteful. According to a report by Goldman Sachs Research, by 2030, US data centers will consume 8% of all electricity in the country. In 2022, this figure was only 3%.