Worldwide data center power demand will rise 27% in 2026 and reach 132 gigawatts, up from 104GW in 2025 , according to Gartner. That's roughly equivalent to adding the entire electricity consumption of Spain in a single year. The IEA estimates data centers consumed around 415 terawatt hours in 2024—about 1.5% of global electricity—and projects that figure will double to 945 TWh by 2030 .
The numbers are staggering, but the real story is playing out in hiring queues and chip deals. Anthropic is hiring for AI data center roles in Australia and Japan as it rushes to expand compute capacity overseas , CNBC reported Tuesday. A listing for a data center energy role in Australia specifically mentions the company's "rapidly expanding AI compute footprint across the region" and talks of leading "multi-hundred megawatt procurement efforts" . The AI lab raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion valuation, with its revenue run-rate crossing $47 billion that month—multiple times higher than the "around $9 billion" figure from the end of 2025 .
Meanwhile, Qualcomm is in advanced talks to acquire Modular Inc. in a transaction valuing the artificial intelligence infrastructure software company at about $4 billion , Bloomberg reported. The deal, which CNBC said could be announced within weeks, signals that the chip wars have moved beyond silicon. Qualcomm plans to acquire AI startup Modular in an all-stock deal valued at about $3.92 billion, a move that gives Qualcomm a software layer built to run AI models across different chips without forcing developers to rewrite code for each processor .
Can the Grid Handle What's Coming?
A January 2026 report by Bloom Energy predicts that U.S. data centers' total combined energy demand will nearly double between 2025 and 2028, jumping from 80 to 150 gigawatts—like adding a country with the energy needs of Spain in just three years , Consumer Reports noted. By 2028, data centers could use 12 percent of all the electricity consumed in the U.S. , according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The strain is already visible. Bloomberg's analysis found that data centers accounted for almost 40 percent of Virginia's total electricity consumption in 2024 . Areas with high concentrations of data centers saw electricity prices jump 267 percent over the past five years , the same analysis found.
Dominion's 2024 resource plan projects nearly 27 GW of new generation by 2039, including 21 GW of renewable energy and 5.9 GW of gas, while Virginia's energy rates are increasing—Dominion proposed its first base-rate increase since 1992, adding about $8.51 per month in 2026 and $2.00 per month in 2027 for a typical household , according to a Belfer Center analysis.
The bottleneck isn't just generation—it's the grid itself. Most of the U.S. grid was built between the 1950s and 1970s, and today, approximately 70% of the grid is approaching the end of its life cycle , an industry executive told Data Center Knowledge.
Why Australia and Japan Matter Now
Anthropic's overseas push isn't about diversification—it's about survival. Australia has excess land, abundant renewable energy potential and a stable political and regulatory environment, plus "distance from military threats, which have proved such a vulnerability for the Gulf states" , an Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst told CNBC. Conflict in the Middle East has tested the region's credentials as a secure place to build AI infrastructure, with two Amazon data centers targeted early in the year.
Japan has evolving grid infrastructure and significant government interest in domestic AI infrastructure , according to Anthropic's job listing. Wood Mackenzie principal analyst Xiaonan Feng noted that "securing power is becoming more challenging than securing land, financing or permits" .
The math is brutal. AI data center racks have gone from each having eight GPUs to 72 starting two years ago, requiring around 150kW of power—and Nvidia's new Rubin GPU and rack system coming out later this year will eventually need around 300kW to run, with the industry bracing for chips that bring racks closer to 1 megawatt, or enough to power 750 U.S. homes on average , Bloomberg reported.
Can Nuclear Fill the Gap?
Tech giants are betting on it. Big tech companies signed contracts for more than 10 gigawatts of possible new nuclear capacity in the United States over the last year, with Microsoft committing to a 20-year, 835-megawatt power purchase agreement to restart Three Mile Island, Google ordering up to 500 megawatts of small modular reactors from Kairos Power, and Amazon investing over $20 billion converting the Susquehanna site into a nuclear-powered AI data center campus , according to industry analysis.
Small Modular Reactors are a new class of nuclear reactors designed to be smaller, safer, and more flexible than traditional plants, typically generating between 50 and 300 MW, making them suitable for single data center campuses or regional clusters . Unlike the massive gigawatt-scale reactors that require large facilities, SMRs are typically 5–300 MW in size and are engineered to be quickly manufactured in factories and transported to their final location, then installed on site on a much smaller footprint than conventional reactors .
But SMRs remain largely unproven at commercial scale. The first units aren't expected online until the late 2020s at the earliest.
