Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Data center demands
Artificial Intelligence | IT
May 20, 2025 – Amid the AI boom, compute power is emerging as an indispensable resource. By 2030, McKinsey expects data centers will need $6.7 trillion in global investments to meet the surging demand, say Senior Partner Mark Patel and coauthors. But for companies across the compute power value chain, making investment decisions is challenging and hinges on forecasting global demand for data center capacity. McKinsey research shows that the capacity needs for AI and non-AI workloads could almost triple by 2030, with AI capacity increasing 3.5 times and making up roughly 70 percent of the total.
To read the article, see “The cost of compute: A $7 trillion race to scale data centers,” April 28, 2025.
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Visual form
Stacked bar chart with a bottom summary row. The graphic tracks future data center capacity demand by splitting each year’s total into AI and non-AI workloads.
Layout / body structure
The chart is a single time-series bar chart running from 2025 to 2030, with a separate summary strip below for incremental AI capacity added per year. Reader moves across the bars year by year and then down to the bottom row for the annual AI additions and the cumulative total.
What is being compared
The chart compares global data center capacity demand over time and splits that demand between AI workloads and non-AI workloads. It is also comparing the pace of annual incremental AI capacity additions from one year to the next.
Measurement system
The stacked bars are measured in gigawatts, and the right-side annotation summarizes the total 2025 to 2030 change as a multiple. The bottom strip is also in gigawatts, but it isolates the incremental AI capacity added each year rather than the full stacked total.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Each year is shown as a two-part stacked column with a dark AI workload base and a lighter non-AI workload layer on top. The top of each bar is labeled with the total, the interior segments are labeled with their component values, a bracket at the right marks the 3.5-times increase from 2025 to 2030, and the bottom row lists annual incremental AI additions culminating in a 2025-30 total.
Main takeaway from the visual
The visible takeaway is that global data center demand rises sharply through 2030 and that both AI and non-AI workloads remain material drivers of that increase. AI becomes the larger component by the end of the period, but the upper non-AI layer still adds substantial volume to the total stack.
Key standout values or extremes
The total grows from 82 gigawatts in 2025 to 219 gigawatts in 2030, with AI workloads rising from 44 to 156 and non-AI workloads rising from 38 to 64. The bottom summary row shows annual incremental AI capacity additions of 13, 18, 21, 19, 22, and 31 gigawatts, for a 2025-30 total of 124 gigawatts.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a static chart image with no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart image is the full visual on this page.