Driven by the rapid growth of cloud computing, investments in the data center industry surged from $7.7 billion in 2016 to $20 billion in 2017, according to a study by real estate company CBRE.
The investments were led by companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Others in the industry still play their part, of course, with companies like Apple recently promising to spend $10bn on US data centers within the next ten years.
The cloud has also become essential to Silicon Valley startups, many of which build entire apps and services off the cloud services from the major companies.
Barely three months into the year, more than $4 billion has already been spent on data centers in North America, according to CBRE. That puts 2018 on track for more than $20 billion.