The DallasNews.com reported that “Thanks in part to an abundance of land, power and talent, North Texas is at the forefront of the world’s AI infrastructure boom.” The September 29, 2026 article entitled “D-FW is already a global data center hub. How many more could be coming?” (https://www.dallasnews.com/business/article/despite-backlash-lot-data-centers-coming-d-fw-22410928.php” included these comments:
North Texas has become a major data center hub thanks largely to its central location and relative abundance of land, talent and power.
But precise figures on the number of data centers in the region (or anywhere else) don’t actually exist, in part because reporting requirements for the facilities vary across municipalities, operators are often keen on remaining under the radar and data centers vary tremendously in size and scope — some have a bigger footprint than New York’s Central Park, and others are small enough to fit inside an office building closet.
“To be quite honest, nobody really knows the exact number,” said Chris Herrmann, another member of CBRE’s data center team.
But the commercial real estate firm, which follows the market closely, tracks about 60 different buildings in D-FW that are used as data centers, which are almost all leased. Those facilities’ capacity adds up to about 1.4 gigawatts, by CBRE’s calculation, or roughly enough to power a million homes.
Data center tracking sites also have estimates: One widely cited tracker, US Data Center Map, counts 143 operational data centers in the D-FW market, including 60 in Dallas, 28 in Fort Worth and 22 in Plano. Those facilities, according to US Data Center Map, have a total power capacity of 2.4 GW; measured by capacity, the largest local sites are Meta’s data center in Fort Worth, Compass Data Center in Red Oak and a Core Scientific data center in Denton.
Is anyone surprised?
First published at https://www.vogelitlaw.com/blog/dallasfort-worth-has-become-a-global-data-center-hub