America wants AI, but a $130 billion roadblock stands in the way

America’s AI push is moving fast on paper, with hundreds of billions of dollars lined up for chips, servers and new facilities. But across the United States, the specific problem is getting AI data centers built on time, with delays now affecting a large share of planned projects. The result is a construction bottleneck that is slowing the physical rollout behind the country’s AI ambitions.

Data center plans are huge, but many projects are stuck

JPMorgan said this year’s AI infrastructure investment totals about $750 billion, but a large chunk of the data center pipeline is still not moving. According to the bank, about 60% of data center capacity planned for completion in 2027 has not yet started construction, and another 7% of projects that did begin have been delayed. Goldman Sachs also said only about half of the AI computing capacity scheduled to come online by 2028 is likely to meet its target date.

The scale is large even before the delays are counted. Stanford University’s AI Index Report said the United States had 5,427 data centers at the end of last year, while Aterio said companies have announced plans for 3,969 more across the country. Of those proposed sites, only 802 are currently under construction.

The national impact is clear, even when local project lists are not

The slowdown is national, but the exact local footprint remains hard to pin down because developers often file in more than one place before choosing a final site. Goldman Sachs said many proposed facilities may never be built, and Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh estimated that just 180 gigawatts of the 565 gigawatts now planned will actually get built over the next decade. He said roughly two-thirds of the pipeline is implausible.

That means communities may hear about projects long before construction actually starts. The industry has not released a comprehensive national list of every delayed or canceled site, and many local governments are still handling permit requests one by one. Cleanview said there are now 438 unique data center developers with projects in the US, showing how spread out and fragmented the pipeline has become.

Materials, power and labor are slowing the buildout

The main obstacle is not just public opposition. Goldman Sachs said permitting is a bigger hurdle than statewide bans, even as about a dozen states have proposed moratoriums and New York and Texas recently put temporary bans in place. At the same time, power equipment is harder to get, with JPMorgan saying wait times for generation step-up transformers have tripled.

The labor and supply side is also tight. The American Edge Project said the US would need 500,000 more electricians, 300,000 welders and 550,000 plumbers to meet proposed construction timelines. Census Bureau data showed data center construction spending still rose to $68.3 billion in June, up 7% from the prior month and 46% from a year earlier, even as Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said the boom is helping fuel inflation.