Data center market to surpass $1 trillion by 2030 as AI fuels growth

The global data center industry is undergoing rapid expansion driven by artificial‑intelligence workloads, cloud adoption and the need for ever‑greater compute capacity. Forecasts from IoT Analytics predict worldwide spending on data‑center equipment and infrastructure will rise from $290 billion in 2024 to over $1 trillion by 2030, a growth of more than 250 %. In the same period, the market for data‑center storage is expected to reach $142.6 billion, growing at an 8.2 % compound annual rate, led by SSD, NVMe and high‑performance HDD technologies.

In Italy, investments of €7.1 billion between 2023‑2025 and over 80 announced projects for 2026‑2028 signal the country’s ambition to become a Mediterranean hub for data‑center capacity. The sector’s expansion raises sustainability challenges: water consumption is measured by the Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) metric, which assesses liters of water per kWh of IT output, while cooling choices balance energy savings against water use. Thermal‑management solutions such as liquid‑cooling and advanced connector systems are being promoted to address the higher heat loads of AI‑intensive servers.

Security is also a priority, with data centres now classified as critical infrastructure under the EU NIS2 directive. Recommendations include multilayer video surveillance, perimeter radar, multifactor access controls and audit‑ready traceability. Energy demand from data centres is projected to double in four years, reaching about 3 % of global electricity consumption, prompting interest in nuclear and other low‑carbon power sources.