Public Data Center Builders Have Struggled In The AI Boom. But Don’t Count Them Out Yet

ByPhoebe Liu,

Forbes Staff.

S

wollen with seemingly insatiable demand for computing power, the AI boom has birthed hundreds of unicorns out of thin air, minted dozens of billionaires and alchemized more than a trillion dollars in market value for big public tech companies like Nvidia, Broadcom, Google and Meta. It’s also inspired an infrastructure land grab perhaps unprecedented in financial breadth. Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to build out tens of gigawatts of AI infrastructure this decade, and “hundreds of gigawatts or more over time.” At $50 billion per gigawatt, that’ll likely cost trillions.

Boom times for AI infrastructure should mean banner years for the companies that have historically provided it: data center real estate investment trusts, or REITs. Yet three of the biggest, Equinix ($78 billion market cap), Digital Realty ($55 billion market cap) and Iron Mountain ($27 billion market cap), aren’t seeing them. Their share prices are down 13%, 11% and 16% over the last year, respectively, compared to the S&P 500’s 17% increase.