Saline, Michigan residents voted against a proposed $16 billion data center, but construction began weeks later. Local opposition to data centers is increasing across the United States, with at least 48 projects representing $156 billion in investment blocked or stalled in 2025. Project cancellations rose from six in 2024 to 25 in 2025, and more than 20 additional projects were killed in the first quarter of 2026. There are 188 local opposition groups operating across 40 states. Despite this, major hyperscalers are raising capital spending projections, with Moody’s projecting $785 billion for 2026 and nearly $1 trillion for 2027. Hyperscalers report strong revenue growth and large contracted revenue backlogs, while AI model companies face compute shortages that keep demand committed. Investment-grade hyperscalers have issued about $240 billion in debt since September 2025 to fund buildouts.
"The town of Saline, Michigan, didn't want a $16 billion data center in its backyard. Residents voted against it. Weeks later, as Fortune's Sharon Goldman reported, construction began anyway. That dynamic - community opposition steamrolled by corporate momentum - is playing out across America at accelerating speed. At least 48 data center projects representing $156 billion in investment were blocked or stalled by local opposition in 2025 alone, according to Miquel Vila, a supply chain and political risk analyst at 10a Labs who maintains the Data Center Watch initiative."
"Project cancellations jumped from six in 2024 to 25 in 2025, and in the first quarter of 2026, more than 20 additional projects were killed - a record quarterly pace. There are now 188 local opposition groups operating across 40 states. And yet Big Tech isn't slowing down. It's accelerating."
"On May 11, Moody's Ratings raised its capital spending projections for the top six U.S. hyperscalers - Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Meta, Alphabet, Oracle, and CoreWeave - to $785 billion for 2026 and nearly $1 trillion for 2027. The revision came after a blowout first quarter in which Google Cloud revenue grew 63%, AWS posted its fastest growth in 15 quarters, and Microsoft's AI revenue surpassed $37 billion at a 123% year-over-year clip."
"The three largest hyperscalers added roughly $700 billion in contracted revenue backlogs over just two quarters, with AI model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic so compute-starved they cannot meet existing demand. From the hyperscalers' perspective, the economic logic is simple: the customers are there, the money is committed, and a blocked permit in rural Virginia is a routing problem, not a stop sign."
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