What are the most valuable data center startups?

Top startups in the data center market ranked by valuation

Here is an updated table that ranks the top startups in the data center market based on their latest reported or estimated valuations.

If you need to dig deeper and get more detailed data, please check our report on data center funding, valuations and who's ahead.

The biggest data center companies are now worth $20 billion to $40 billion, with Aligned Data Centers at roughly $40 billion, STACK Infrastructure estimated at $30–40 billion, Crusoe at $30.9 billion, and CyrusOne around $22–28 billion.

That upper tier has become much larger than it was only a few years ago. Using the conservative lower end of every range in our dataset, 12 companies are worth at least $10 billion and 27 are worth at least $5 billion.

Aligned gives us the cleanest benchmark. Its acquisition recently closed at an enterprise value of about $40 billion. The company has 51 campuses and more than 6.4 GW of operating and planned capacity.

Crusoe reached almost the same tier through a completely different route. Its latest $3.9 billion private round valued the company at $30.9 billion post-money. Crusoe now reports more than 6 GW of gross contracted capacity and over $140 billion of contracted value across its infrastructure platform.

At the top, the split is pretty clear. Companies such as Aligned, AirTrunk and atNorth are being priced as enormous infrastructure platforms, while Crusoe is also getting credit for the AI compute and software layers sitting on top of its physical infrastructure.

Rank	Company	Current valuation	Main valuation basis
1	Aligned Data Centers	$40.0B	Acquisition
2	STACK Infrastructure	$30.0B–$40.0B	Estimated
3	Crusoe	$30.9B	Private funding round
4	CyrusOne	$22.0B–$28.0B	Estimated
5	EdgeConneX	$18.0B–$24.0B	Estimated
6	Vantage Data Centers	$18.0B–$24.0B	Estimated
7	AirTrunk	$16.1B–$22.0B	Acquisition-linked
8	DayOne	$16.0B–$20.0B	IPO-related estimate
9	CDC Data Centres	$12.4B–$14.0B	Estimated
10	Switch	$11.0B	Acquisition

Is Aligned Data Centers really worth $40 billion?

Yes. Aligned Data Centers has a real $40 billion transaction behind its valuation, which makes it one of the strongest numbers anywhere in this ranking.

The acquisition by the AI Infrastructure Partnership, MGX and BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners has now closed at an enterprise value of approximately $40 billion. That gives Aligned a much firmer benchmark than companies valued from financing discussions, revenue multiples or comparable transactions.

There is serious physical scale behind the price. Aligned says its portfolio covers 51 campuses and more than 6.4 GW of operating and planned capacity.

Still, dividing $40 billion by 6.4 GW and calling the result a valuation multiple would be too simplistic. Some capacity is already operating, some is contracted, and some still sits in the development pipeline. Those stages carry very different values.

The better comparison is AirTrunk. When Blackstone agreed to acquire AirTrunk, the company had grown from five sites and 450 MW of capacity in 2020 to 11 sites and more than 1.8 GW. That transaction implied an enterprise value above A$24 billion. Aligned later pushed the sector benchmark much higher.

Investors are effectively paying for years of work that has already been done: land assembled, power secured, campuses designed, customer relationships built and financing channels proven.

How did Crusoe become a $30.9 billion company so fast?

Crusoe reached a $30.9 billion valuation because the business expanded far beyond its early energy-and-compute model and became one of the clearest pure plays on AI infrastructure.

The valuation trajectory is extreme. Crusoe's Series D valued the company at $2.8 billion in late 2024. Its latest Series F values it at $30.9 billion. That is roughly an elevenfold increase in less than two years.

Crusoe's operating profile changed quickly at the same time. The company now reports more than $140 billion of total contracted value, more than 6 GW of gross contracted capacity, around 1 GW already delivered and operational, and more than $100 million of contracted annual recurring revenue from managed inference.

Those figures explain why Crusoe can trade at a very different valuation from a conventional colocation operator. The company touches energy, data center construction, GPU infrastructure, cloud computing and managed AI inference.

Investors are pricing more than the buildings it controls. They are also pricing the chance that Crusoe can earn higher-value compute revenue on the same underlying power infrastructure.

Is AI really driving data center valuations now?

Yes. AI is currently the biggest force behind the jump in data center valuations, especially for operators that can deliver large blocks of power quickly.

The clearest evidence comes from the physical market. CBRE found that primary data center supply in North America grew 33.7% year over year in the first half of 2026, yet vacancy still fell to 1.4%. More than 80% of capacity under construction was already preleased. Vacancy falling to 1.4% despite 33.7% more supply is a shift; we cover what changed in the last 12 months in our data centers report.

Supply is expanding at an extraordinary pace and customers are still absorbing almost everything developers can deliver.

JLL found an even more dramatic demand figure using its broader methodology: North American data center absorption reached 25 GW in the first half of 2026, twice the level a year earlier and five times the level two years earlier.

The companies at the top of our ranking fit that pattern. Aligned targets cloud and AI workloads. Crusoe builds what it calls AI factories. Yotta is deploying more than 20,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs. atNorth specializes in high-density infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing. Vantage, EdgeConneX, DayOne and CtrlS are all developing much larger campuses than traditional enterprise data centers required.

Cloud computing still accounts for a huge amount of demand, but AI has changed what buyers are willing to pay for a large, power-secured campus.

How many data center unicorns are there?

At least 76 companies in our 100-company dataset are worth $1 billion or more when we use the lower end of every valuation range.

That is a remarkably deep billion-dollar market. We do not need optimistic midpoint assumptions to get there: more than three quarters of the companies already clear the threshold on a conservative basis.

The number would rise slightly if we used midpoints. AQ Compute, for example, sits at $800 million to $1.3 billion, while Kao Data is estimated at $900 million to $1 billion.

The term “unicorn” is a little awkward here because many companies have moved well beyond a normal startup profile. Switch, QTS and CyrusOne are mature infrastructure businesses. NEXTDC and MEEZA are publicly listed. Aligned has just changed hands in a $40 billion acquisition.

Still, the count says something useful about the depth of the market. This category has dozens of billion-dollar platforms rather than a small handful of giants surrounded by tiny operators.

Which data center companies are worth more than $10 billion?

Twelve data center companies in our ranking have valuations of at least $10 billion on a conservative basis, with several more able to cross that level at the upper end of their ranges.

North America dominates the group through Aligned, STACK, Crusoe, CyrusOne, EdgeConneX, Vantage, Switch and QTS. Asia-Pacific contributes AirTrunk and CDC Data Centres, while DayOne has grown into a global platform with a heavy Asian footprint. ST Telemedia Global Data Centres recently received an implied enterprise value of about $10.9 billion.

The jump between the bottom and top of this group is large. QTS sits at roughly $10 billion in our dataset, while Aligned is worth about four times as much.

A $10 billion data center company is now clearly part of the industry's top tier, yet the biggest platforms are already moving toward $30 billion and $40 billion.

Company	Current valuation
Aligned Data Centers	$40.0B
STACK Infrastructure	$30.0B–$40.0B
Crusoe	$30.9B
CyrusOne	$22.0B–$28.0B
EdgeConneX	$18.0B–$24.0B
Vantage Data Centers	$18.0B–$24.0B
AirTrunk	$16.1B–$22.0B
DayOne	$16.0B–$20.0B
CDC Data Centres	$12.4B–$14.0B
Switch	$11.0B
ST Telemedia Global Data Centres	$10.9B
QTS Data Centers	$10.0B

Why are investors paying so much for data centers today?

Investors are paying much more for data centers because usable power has become scarce, construction costs have exploded and large AI customers want capacity faster than developers can deliver it.

JLL estimates that average global shell-and-core construction costs rose from about $7.7 million per MW in 2020 to $10.7 million in 2025 and could reach around $11.3 million per MW in 2026.

The tenant's technology equipment can cost even more. JLL says an AI fit-out can reach roughly $25 million per MW. A 100 MW AI facility can therefore involve several billion dollars of combined property and computing investment. A 100 MW AI facility can cost several billion dollars; we look at which investors are making the biggest bets in our data centers report.

Power has become even more important than the building cost. JLL now calls speed to power the main criterion in data center site selection. CBRE likewise says power availability and infrastructure delivery timelines are among the biggest factors shaping leasing and pricing.

An existing platform with grid access can command a huge premium because a buyer may save years compared with assembling equivalent power positions from scratch.

The industry is increasingly pricing time, power access and execution together.

Is AirTrunk still one of the world's most valuable data center companies?

Yes. AirTrunk remains one of the most valuable private data center platforms in the world, even after newer deals pushed the absolute valuation ceiling higher.

Its expansion was unusually fast. Macquarie and PSP Investments backed AirTrunk when the company had five data centers and roughly 450 MW of capacity. By the time Blackstone's consortium agreed to acquire it, AirTrunk had 11 sites across Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia and more than 1.8 GW across the portfolio.

The transaction implied an enterprise value above A$24 billion. AirTrunk also had more than 800 MW already committed to customers and land capable of supporting more than another gigawatt.

Investors had seen that the company could repeat its model across several countries rather than simply build one large campus.

Aligned and Crusoe have since established even larger valuation benchmarks, but AirTrunk remains one of the clearest examples of a regional data center company turning into a global-scale infrastructure asset.

Why are Asian data center companies getting so valuable?

Asian data center companies are getting more valuable because the region is combining fast cloud growth, AI investment, sovereign-data demand and severe power constraints in several major cities.

Our ranking shows how broad that trend has become. AirTrunk, DayOne, CDC Data Centres, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, CtrlS, Princeton Digital Group, Bridge Data Centres, Digital Edge and Yotta all sit high in the table.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres recently gave us a useful transaction benchmark. A KKR-led consortium with Singtel agreed to acquire the remaining stake in the company at an implied enterprise value of about S$13.8 billion, or approximately $10.9 billion. STT GDC operates across major markets in Asia-Pacific, the UK and Europe.

AirTrunk provides an even bigger reference point with its A$24 billion-plus transaction.

The projects themselves are also getting much larger. CBRE says new developments in Asia-Pacific increasingly exceed 100 MW, while operators are moving into places such as Johor, Batam and India where large-scale power can still be assembled.

Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong remain important, but the next generation of Asian capacity is increasingly being built around nearby markets that offer more land and electricity.

Is India becoming a major data center market?

Yes. India is now producing multibillion-dollar data center companies and AI infrastructure projects large enough to matter globally.

CtrlS gives us the clearest current valuation benchmark. CPP Investments recently committed up to ₹7,000 crore to the company and a related hyperscale joint venture. CtrlS disclosed a pre-money valuation of ₹44,824 crore, equivalent to roughly C$6.6 billion.

The operating plan is ambitious as well. CtrlS says it is working toward more than 4 GW of AI-ready infrastructure.

Yotta is approaching the market from the compute side. The company announced more than 20,000 liquid-cooled Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs, representing over $2 billion of investment. It also disclosed a four-year Nvidia engagement worth more than $1 billion. Yotta says its Greater Noida campus can scale to 250 MW and its Navi Mumbai campus to 2 GW.

AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel add two more large platforms to the Indian market.

Pension funds, telecom groups, infrastructure conglomerates and AI-cloud operators are all building capacity at the same time. That is a long way from an early speculative market.

Are European data center companies catching up with the US and Asia?

Europe has built a deep group of multibillion-dollar data center companies, but the continent still has fewer platforms in the $15 billion-plus tier.

Our estimates place Colt DCS around $7–10 billion, Pure Data Centres around $6–8 billion, VIRTUS around $5.5–8 billion, DATA4 around $5–6.5 billion and Global Technical Realty around $5–6 billion.

atNorth gives us a much firmer reference point. CPP Investments and Equinix recently completed its acquisition at a $4 billion enterprise value. The company has eight operating data centers across the Nordics and more than 1.5 GW of secured power according to Partners Group.

atNorth has also kept growing during the transaction process. Partners Group says contracted EBITDA doubled since the end of 2025 and increased fourteenfold during its four years of ownership.

Its new Norwegian campus shows where European growth is moving. The project is designed to start at 120 MW and eventually reach 350 MW, with power availability dependent on new grid infrastructure.

Europe can produce valuable data center companies, particularly in the Nordics where renewable power and cooler climates help high-density computing. The biggest US and Asian platforms still command much higher absolute valuations today. The biggest US and Asian platforms still command much higher values, and we look at who is ahead, and who is falling behind, in our report covering data centers.

Does having more megawatts automatically make a data center company worth more?

No. Data center valuations depend heavily on how usable, contracted and close to operation those megawatts really are.

Aligned has more than 6.4 GW of operating and planned capacity and is worth about $40 billion. Crusoe reports more than 6 GW of gross contracted capacity and carries a $30.9 billion valuation. AirTrunk had more than 1.8 GW across its portfolio around the time of its A$24 billion-plus transaction.

Those numbers look comparable until we examine what sits underneath them.

A megawatt running today under a long-term contract with a hyperscaler is worth far more than a megawatt attached to undeveloped land where power may arrive years later. Grid connection, construction status, customer commitments and financing all change the economics.

atNorth illustrates the timing issue well. Its planned Norwegian site can eventually reach 350 MW, but power availability is projected for 2028 and depends on new substations. The future capacity is valuable because atNorth controls the site and development path, although it cannot be treated like 350 MW of operating capacity today.

A large parcel of land has limited value for AI infrastructure when a developer cannot secure hundreds of megawatts. A less obvious location with credible grid access can be far more attractive.

So we pay much more attention to deliverable megawatts than headline pipeline numbers.

Is there enough real demand to support today's data center valuations?

Yes, for now. Current vacancy, leasing and preleasing numbers show that customers are absorbing data center capacity extremely quickly.

CBRE reported primary-market vacancy of only 1.4% in North America even after supply grew 33.7% year over year. Developers had 7,481 MW under construction, and 80.4% of that capacity had already been preleased.

Less than 1,500 MW of future capacity remained available across the primary markets covered by CBRE, equivalent to roughly six months of demand at the current absorption rate.

Pricing is moving in the same direction. CBRE found higher asking rents across every major deployment size, including an 8.3% increase for 3-to-10-MW deployments.

Company data also show real commitments behind the boom. Crusoe reports more than $140 billion of contracted value. AirTrunk had more than 800 MW committed to customers around its sale. Partners Group says atNorth's contracted EBITDA has doubled since the end of 2025.

None of those figures guarantee that every proposed AI campus will make money. They do show that today's valuation boom is happening in a market where available capacity remains unusually scarce.

Current demand indicator	Latest figure
North American primary-market vacancy	1.4%
Primary-market supply growth	+33.7% YoY
Capacity under construction	7,481 MW
Construction already preleased	80.4%
Future capacity still available	<1,500 MW
Global vacancy across 16 major markets	6.7%
Global supply growth	+25% YoY
JLL North American H1 absorption	25 GW

Are we building too many AI data centers?

Probably not yet. The current numbers still point to a shortage of deliverable capacity, although the risk of overbuilding individual projects is becoming much more serious.

The distinction between announced capacity and usable capacity is crucial. A project can appear in a multi-gigawatt development pipeline years before its transformers, transmission lines, permits and financing are ready.

McKinsey recently looked directly at the risk of overbuilding power infrastructure for AI data centers in the United States. Its conclusion was that the greater near-term risk may still be underbuilding, even if compute demand eventually lands below the most aggressive forecasts.

The current market data support that view. Global supply across 16 major markets grew 25% year over year according to CBRE, while vacancy still fell from 8.3% to 6.7%. In North America's primary markets, vacancy is much tighter at 1.4%.

The risk gets more interesting at the company level. Some developers are making enormous capital commitments against a small number of AI customers. A change in model efficiency, chip economics or customer financing could hurt individual campuses even while the overall data center market stays healthy.

There is real risk of bad projects and overextended financing. We do not yet see evidence of a broad market flooded with empty AI data centers.

Why are data center companies raising so much money?

Data center companies are raising billions because modern AI campuses are simply too expensive to finance like normal startups.

JLL's construction estimates make the scale easy to understand. At roughly $11.3 million per MW for shell-and-core construction, a 500 MW development implies about $5.65 billion of building cost before the tenant installs its AI equipment. Building a single campus can cost billions, so we trace who has raised the most, and from whom, in our data centers market report.

An AI technology fit-out can cost up to another $25 million per MW. At that level, 500 MW of compute equipment would represent another $12.5 billion.

This is why the funding figures in our ranking sometimes look larger than the companies' own valuations. Data center financing frequently includes project debt, construction loans, joint-venture capital and money tied to individual campuses. It cannot be read like a normal venture-capital total.

atNorth gives us a recent example. The $4 billion acquisition was accompanied by a $4.1 billion financing package designed to fund the transaction and the company's continued expansion.

The financing structures around AI infrastructure are also getting more complicated. The Financial Times recently reported that large technology companies are using special-purpose vehicles and residual-value guarantees to support hundreds of billions of dollars of data center and chip financing.

That adds another risk: data center valuations increasingly depend on access to cheap, deep and patient capital.

Which kinds of data center companies get the highest valuations?

Large hyperscale platforms with secured power currently command the highest data center valuations, while companies that also sell AI compute can push even higher.

Aligned, STACK, CyrusOne, EdgeConneX, Vantage, AirTrunk and DayOne all fit the first group. Their advantage is the ability to deliver very large campuses to hyperscalers and AI customers.

Crusoe adds another layer. It builds the data centers, participates in energy infrastructure, operates GPU capacity and sells cloud and managed inference services. That gives the company more ways to earn revenue from each block of power it controls.

Yotta is moving in a similar direction in India by combining hyperscale facilities with enormous GPU deployments.

Regional colocation companies generally appear further down the ranking. A network of smaller enterprise facilities can still be a strong business, but it cannot absorb a 100 MW or 200 MW AI requirement as easily as a multi-campus hyperscale developer.

The scale gap is huge. Aligned's $40 billion enterprise value is around 40 times the midpoint of a $900 million-to-$1 billion company such as Kao Data and hundreds of times larger than some regional operators near the bottom of our ranking.

Right now, the premium goes to companies that can turn scarce power into very large, repeatable customer deployments.

Can you really compare a $40 billion acquisition with a $30.9 billion startup valuation?

Yes, but only as a broad measure of company value. A $40 billion enterprise value and a $30.9 billion post-money equity valuation are different financial measurements.

Aligned's approximately $40 billion acquisition figure is enterprise value. It reflects the value of the operating business while taking the capital structure into account.

Crusoe's $30.9 billion figure is the post-money equity valuation from its latest private financing round.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres gives us another enterprise-value example. Its recent transaction implied a value of about $10.9 billion including leverage and capital expenditure for committed projects.

Public companies add another measurement. NEXTDC and MEEZA are represented by market capitalization, which values the publicly traded equity and changes with the share price.

These figures still belong in the same ranking because someone searching for the world's most valuable data center companies wants the best current economic reference available for each business.

The differences become important when companies sit very close together. We should not pretend a $10.9 billion enterprise value and a $10 billion historical acquisition price are precise enough to settle which underlying business is intrinsically worth more. A gap such as $40 billion versus $3 billion is much more meaningful.

Is DayOne really worth $20 billion?

DayOne could reach a $20 billion valuation, but the number is currently a proposed IPO benchmark rather than a completed transaction.

Bloomberg reported earlier this year that DayOne was considering a US listing at a valuation as high as $20 billion. That would represent a major increase from the roughly $10 billion level associated with previous private financing. A listing target at double the last private value shows how fast numbers move; we compare what each company is worth, then and now, in our data centers report.

The operating footprint has expanded enough to make the target plausible. DayOne has developed a large presence across Singapore, Johor, Batam, Tokyo and Hong Kong while also moving into Europe.

Even so, an IPO target tells us what a company and its advisers hope the public market may accept. Crusoe's $30.9 billion round and Aligned's $40 billion acquisition give us firmer evidence because investors have already committed capital at those values.

That is why our ranking uses a $16–20 billion range for DayOne rather than presenting $20 billion as a confirmed point valuation.

Which data center valuations have risen the fastest?

Crusoe has produced the most dramatic confirmed valuation increase in our ranking, jumping from $2.8 billion in late 2024 to $30.9 billion today.

That is more than a tenfold increase in less than two years.

AirTrunk followed a slower infrastructure path. Between 2020 and its sale, capacity expanded from roughly 450 MW across five sites to more than 1.8 GW across 11 sites. The company ultimately reached an enterprise value above A$24 billion.

atNorth gives us another useful growth case. Partners Group says contracted EBITDA increased fourteenfold during its ownership and doubled again since the end of 2025. The company has now been acquired at a $4 billion enterprise value.

DayOne could become the next big step-up if public investors eventually accept a valuation approaching its reported $20 billion target.

The biggest increases have come from companies whose operating scale genuinely changed through larger power portfolios, new geographies, major customer commitments or new AI-compute revenue.

What could make data center valuations fall?

Data center valuations could fall hard if AI customers stop absorbing capacity at today's pace while developers remain locked into huge power, construction and debt commitments.

Customer concentration is one of the biggest risks. A large AI campus can depend on one tenant signing a very long lease. That works extremely well while the tenant keeps expanding, but it creates a painful problem if the customer cuts spending or runs into financing trouble.

Debt is another pressure point. The sector now requires enormous borrowing, and lenders are starting to price more of that risk explicitly. Recent Financial Times reporting has shown higher borrowing costs and investor caution around several large AI data center financings.

Technology can also move faster than the buildings. More efficient chips or models could reduce the amount of infrastructure required for a given amount of AI output. Older campuses may need expensive upgrades to support higher rack densities and new cooling systems.

Power and local politics add another layer. JLL recently found a large gap between public support for national AI leadership and support for building data centers locally. Grid delays, water concerns, noise complaints and permitting disputes can push projects years behind schedule.

These risks are especially dangerous when a company has a huge speculative pipeline but limited contracted demand. The strongest operators today tend to have customers attached to capacity before construction finishes.

What does the data center valuation ranking tell us about the market today?

The data center market has moved into a new valuation era: the best-positioned platforms are now $20 billion, $30 billion and even $40 billion businesses because AI has made large blocks of deliverable power extraordinarily valuable.

Our ranking captures the scale of that shift. Aligned recently closed at about $40 billion. Crusoe reached $30.9 billion after being valued at $2.8 billion less than two years earlier. AirTrunk established another major benchmark above A$24 billion. ST Telemedia Global Data Centres recently received an implied enterprise value around $10.9 billion, while atNorth changed hands at $4 billion.

The underlying market still supports those valuations today. North American primary-market vacancy is around 1.4%, more than 80% of construction is already preleased, and global vacancy keeps falling despite fast supply growth.

The market is also becoming much more divided. Regional colocation companies can still build good businesses, but investors are paying a very different price for operators that can secure hundreds of megawatts, sign hyperscale customers and repeat that process across multiple regions.

AI has accelerated that divide.

For now, the upper end of the ranking reflects a genuine change in the economics of data center infrastructure. The bigger uncertainty sits further ahead: whether today's enormous AI commitments eventually produce enough revenue to support all the debt, power contracts and campuses now being built.