Why Dallas-Fort Worth belongs on the shortlist
Dallas-Fort Worth combines a central U.S. location, a mature carrier ecosystem, broad enterprise demand, and room for large campus development. It can support primary infrastructure, disaster recovery, national application delivery, cloud-adjacent deployments, and large AI or hyperscale requirements.
CBRE reported 1,249.4 MW of DFW inventory in Q1 2026, up 43.7% year over year. That growth moved DFW into the No. 3 position among U.S. colocation markets. Market vacancy fell to a record-low 1.8%, showing that demand has kept pace with new supply.
1,249.4 MW
Total wholesale inventory reported for Q1 2026.
43.7% growth
Year-over-year inventory expansion, the fastest among the top four markets.
716.7 MW
Record volume under construction at the end of the quarter.
88% preleased
Most capacity under construction was already committed before delivery.
Source: CBRE Global Data Center Trends 2026. Figures describe the metro market, not availability at a particular facility.
The DFW capacity paradox
A large construction pipeline can create the impression that capacity is plentiful. In DFW, 88% of the record 716.7 MW under construction was already preleased. The useful buyer question is not how much has been announced. It is how much can be delivered for your power profile, density, network requirement, and start date.
Separate operating capacity, capacity under construction with a firm delivery path, and planned capacity that still depends on utility, zoning, or entitlement milestones.
Power delivery is the gating item
CBRE notes that Oncor is conducting data center load-cluster studies to determine paths toward grid interconnection. It also reports that grid-interconnection timelines have not materially improved over the prior six to 12 months. A facility search should validate utility status and delivery dependencies before treating a future phase as a real option.
- Is the required power already energized, under construction, or only planned?
- Which utility milestones remain, and who carries schedule risk?
- Does the proposed delivery date assume a substation, transmission, or interconnection upgrade?
- How much of the phase is already preleased, and is the offered block contiguous?
- Can the operator contractually support the ramp and future expansion?
Where the market is expanding
DFW has multiple established and emerging clusters rather than a single corridor. CBRE reports that developers are increasingly evaluating locations farther south along I-35 as fiber connectivity improves. That can create future scale, but an outer submarket should be tested against carrier diversity, latency, staff access, cloud connectivity, and the utility delivery path.
For an enterprise buyer, a newer campus is not automatically better than an established interconnection location. The right choice depends on whether the workload values ecosystem density, a large future power envelope, immediate availability, or a specific geographic and risk profile.
What drives a DFW colocation quote
- Committed kW or MW, ramp schedule, and term length.
- Whether capacity is live, near-term, or dependent on future utility work.
- Rack density, cooling design, and AI-readiness.
- Carrier choice, cross-connect count, cloud access, and route diversity.
- Private cage, suite, hall, or wholesale configuration.
- Install charges, annual increases, renewal language, and expansion rights.
- Physical-security, compliance, remote-hands, and operating-support scope.
When DFW is the strongest fit
DFW is compelling when central geography improves application reach or disaster-recovery design, when the project needs large-campus optionality, or when Texas operations and staff access matter. It should be compared directly with Chicago for central U.S. placement, Atlanta for southern and East Coast reach, and Northern Virginia when interconnection depth is the priority.
Run established and emerging DFW submarkets in parallel. Make operators prove power status, delivery dependencies, carrier fit, and the commercial value of any future expansion.
A facility-ready DFW brief
- Initial and future committed power by quarter.
- Average and peak rack density, plus cooling requirements.
- Target service date and the cost of schedule slippage.
- Carrier, cloud, cross-connect, latency, and route-diversity requirements.
- Compliance, security, access, and remote-hands expectations.
- Preferred term, ramp, renewal, and expansion structure.
Dallas-Fort Worth by the numbers
Dallas is the fastest-growing large data center market in the country, and the only one of the top four where asking rents did not move last year. That combination is unusual enough to be the reason most buyers should look here.
| Measure | Figure | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Total inventory | 1,249.4 MW | Third-largest US colocation market, up 43.7% year over year |
| Asking rent change | Unchanged | The only top-four market that did not reprice in Q1 2026 |
| Overall vacancy | 2.4% | The loosest of the top four, though still historically tight |
| Net absorption | 470.8 MW | Up 424.0 MW year over year |
| Under construction | About 700 MW | Roughly 94.5% preleased |
| Industrial power | About $0.0972/kWh | Roughly 23% below the national average |
Sources: CBRE Dallas-Fort Worth market profile and CBRE Global Data Center Trends 2026. CBRE has published under-construction capacity as both about 700 MW at 94.5% preleased and a record-high 716.7 MW at 88% preleased in different periods; the difference is most likely a quarter's movement rather than a revision. Completed and current construction is expected to roughly double the market by the end of 2026.
Rents held steady while the market absorbed 470.8 MW and nearly all new construction was preleased. That is not a soft market. It is a market where supply arrived fast enough to keep pace with demand. If absorption stays at this level and the pipeline tightens, flat becomes the exception. That is an argument for a longer term now, not for waiting.
The submarkets, and what each is good for
The Metroplex is geographically large, and a core interconnection site and a western campus are different products at different prices. Decide which you are buying before comparing quotes.
Dallas core and the Infomart corridor
The historic carrier and interconnection center. The answer for peering, cloud on-ramps and latency-sensitive workloads rather than for cheap megawatts.
Richardson and Plano
North corridor enterprise colocation with established multi-tenant facilities and solid carrier choice. Well suited to cabinet and cage requirements.
Fort Worth and west
Where land and power support campus-scale development. Larger contiguous blocks and longer timelines, and the corridor most exposed to transmission upgrade timing.
Outer Metroplex
Where much of the planned greenfield capacity is staged. Availability the core cannot match, at the cost of drive time and carrier depth.
Power is the advantage, transmission is the constraint
Dallas has the strongest power economics of the four largest markets, at roughly 23% below the national average, and that is why large requirements keep landing here. The constraint is not the cost of electricity but the ability to move it.
Two things govern delivery. The market has introduced new controls restricting entry into the power queue, which means speculative queue positions are harder to hold and a provider's claimed date needs testing. And further expansion depends on the Oncor Regional Transmission Plan to add high-voltage lines and upgrade existing infrastructure. An additional 3 GW of greenfield development is planned beyond the current pipeline, but that capacity is contingent on the transmission work completing.
Is this energized capacity, a held queue position, or a plan contingent on transmission work? The three carry very different risk and can be quoted at similar rates. Ask which specific transmission or substation project the delivery date depends on.
The freeze on new connections, and what it does to DFW
On 3 August 2026 the governor halted approvals for any data center seeking a new connection to the ERCOT grid, pending a joint audit by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT. ERCOT paused its "batch zero" interconnection review in the same week. Developers now have to disclose the tax incentives they receive, their power use and generation, their water use and cooling method, what they are doing about local impact, and who owns the facility. More than 1,800 projects sit in that queue representing over 474 GW, roughly 90% of them data centers, which is more than five times the grid's record peak demand. No end date has been given.
Read against the transmission position above, the freeze lands on the least certain part of this market rather than the most. Energised capacity is untouched. Buildings already under construction and connected are untouched. What is gated is the 3 GW of greenfield development planned beyond the current pipeline, which was already contingent on the Oncor Regional Transmission Plan completing and is now contingent on an audit with no published deadline as well.
For a buyer the practical effect is a widening gap between two things that get quoted at similar rates. A held queue position was already worth less than energised power. It is worth materially less this month than it was last month, and the operator quoting it has had a week to reprice.
Ask whether the capacity you are being offered depends on an ERCOT interconnection that has not yet been approved. If it does, the delivery date is not a forecast with a margin of error, it is unknown until the audit closes. Sites with their own on-site generation sit outside the freeze, so that is worth asking about too. Central Texas is under the same rule and has a thinner standing base to fall back on, which is covered on the Austin and San Antonio guide.
Reported by the Texas Tribune on 3 August 2026 and KERA News on 4 August 2026.
Why Dallas wins deals
- Power cost: roughly 23% below the national average, and the primary reason hyperscale demand shifted here.
- Rate stability: the only top-four market with unchanged asking rents, against 14.7% growth in Chicago.
- Available capacity: 2.4% vacancy is tight in absolute terms but the loosest of the four, which means marginally more negotiating room.
- Speed of delivery: a market that added 43.7% of inventory in a year has demonstrated it can build, which matters for phased requirements.
- Central US latency: workable reach to both coasts, and strong regional network density.
- Equipment tax treatment: Texas offers a sales and use tax exemption on qualifying data center equipment with investment and job thresholds and a certification process. Confirm qualification with a tax advisor rather than assuming, and model the case without it.
What Dallas does not offer is Ashburn's interconnection depth. It is a strong network market and a weak substitute if your requirement is the widest possible carrier and cloud on-ramp choice. Compare it against the published figures on the pricing benchmarks page before deciding the premium elsewhere is unjustified.
What to watch next
The question for Dallas is whether flat rents survive the next absorption cycle. Two signals matter. First, whether the Oncor transmission plan delivers on schedule, since the planned 3 GW of greenfield depends on it and a delay would tighten supply into rising demand. Second, whether preleasing stays above 90%, because a market that pre-commits nearly all new supply has no cushion if a single large tenant accelerates. Neither is a reason to avoid Dallas. Both are reasons to treat the escalator and renewal clause as the most important terms in the document, since they decide what happens when the market stops being flat.
What has been announced in Dallas-Fort Worth
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below was read on the page it links to.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.8 GW | PowerHouse Data Centers and Provident | DFW campus | 768 acres, 24 buildings over three phases. Announced switchyard capacity |
| 550 MW | Yondr | Lancaster campus | 163 acres south of Dallas |
| 311 MW | Big Digital Energy | Campus outside DFW | Land acquired |
| 220 MW | STACK Infrastructure | Dallas campus | Six buildings at 36 MW each, on-site Oncor substation |
| 48 MW | Stream Data Centers | Wilmer II | First building of a campus planned to reach 240 MW |
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is kept apart from the permit record above and never added to it: one is a document a jurisdiction issued, the other is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
Every Dallas-Fort Worth facility we track
288 data centers across Dallas-Fort Worth, from our verified inventory. It is the layer that says whether a building exists yet, which no permit record answers directly.
| Status | Facilities | What it means for a search |
|---|---|---|
| Operational | 99 | Standing and running. The only layer that can hold a requirement this year |
| Under construction | 28 | Steel is up. Reachable for a date 6 to 18 months out, and usually pre-leasing now |
| Planned | 161 | Announced or entitled, not yet built. Treat every date on these as a forecast |
| Building area on file | 71,130,037 SF | Across the 179 facilities where a size is recorded, of 288 |
| Largest single building | 8,580,000 SF | STACK Infrastructure, Fort Worth |
Operators with the most facilities here: CyrusOne (28), QTS (28), Digital Realty (23), Stream Data Centers (18), DataBank (16), Compass Datacenters (14), STACK Infrastructure (14), NTT Global Data Centers (11), Skybox Datacenters (11), DartPoints (8).
Where they cluster: Dallas (41), Lancaster (41), Plano (26), Red Oak (25), Richardson (20), Fort Worth (19).
The largest buildings coming to this market
189 facilities here are under construction or planned. These are the ten largest by floor area, and a size on file is not a promise of a delivery date.
| Operator | Status | Building size | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| STACK Infrastructure | Planned | 8,580,000 SF | Fort Worth, TX |
| DartPoints | Planned | 1,350,000 SF | Dallas, TX |
| DartPoints | Planned | 1,100,000 SF | Dallas, TX |
| Digital Realty | Planned | 832,000 SF | Midlothian, TX |
| Digital Realty | Planned | 810,000 SF | Midlothian, TX |
| Digital Realty | Planned | 810,000 SF | Midlothian, TX |
| Digital Realty | Planned | 810,000 SF | Midlothian, TX |
| EdgeConneX | Planned | 700,500 SF | Lancaster, TX |
| EdgeConneX | Planned | 700,500 SF | Lancaster, TX |
| EdgeConneX | Planned | 700,500 SF | Lancaster, TX |
From our verified inventory rather than from a public record, so these rows carry no filing link and street addresses are held back. These buildings are verified, which is not the same as their space being available: every facility above may be full, pre-leased, or closed to your size. Finding out is a call, not a lookup. See what a verified building does and does not mean.
Who is actually plugged in across Dallas-Fort Worth
A building existing and a building being connected are different facts, and only one of them decides whether your traffic can get where it needs to go cheaply. These figures come from PeeringDB, which the network operators themselves maintain, so every row below links to the building's own public entry.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings listed | 58 | Registered in PeeringDB across Dallas-Fort Worth, by 28 operators |
| Buildings with a network present | 49 | 9 carry no network presence, which usually means single tenant or simply unregistered |
| Network presences | 939 | Counted per building, so a carrier in three buildings counts three times |
| Internet exchange presences | 78 | Where you can reach many networks through one port instead of many cross-connects |
| Carrier presences | 100 | The physical transport choice you can buy without leaving the building |
| In the densest building | 18% | Equinix DA1 - Dallas holds 168 of the market's network presences |
The most connected buildings here
| Networks | Building | Operator | Exchanges | Carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 168 | Equinix DA1 - Dallas | Equinix, Inc. | 5 | 8 |
| 103 | Equinix DA3 - Dallas | Equinix, Inc. | 6 | 6 |
| 79 | Equinix DA6 - Dallas | Equinix, Inc. | 6 | 6 |
| 65 | Digital Realty DFW (2323 Bryan St) | Digital Realty | 4 | 3 |
| 60 | Equinix DA - Dallas (previously Infomart Dallas) | Equinix, Inc. | 3 | 4 |
| 54 | Equinix DA11 - Dallas | Equinix, Inc. | 3 | 4 |
| 47 | Equinix DA2 - Dallas | Equinix, Inc. | 5 | 6 |
| 43 | DataBank Dallas (DFW1) | DataBank, Ltd. | 4 | 3 |
From PeeringDB, which is maintained by the network operators present in these buildings rather than by the landlords, which is what makes it worth more than a directory. Two limits. Entries are voluntary, so a building showing no networks may be single tenant or may simply never have registered. And a network being present says nothing about whether the building has space, power or a price for you: that is still a call.
What the public construction record shows in Dallas-Fort Worth
Building permits from four DFW jurisdictions plus TCEQ air permits. Every figure below is a count of filings we collected ourselves, and every row links to the record it came from.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filings we track | 192 | Deduplicated. Across 5 sources, July 1980 to August 2026 |
| Filed in the last 12 months | 27 | The live rate of construction activity, which is the number that moves |
| Tenant fit-out filings | 32 | A customer is landing in a named building. The strongest signal in the set |
| New building filings | 24 | Shell and site work, which is capacity two years out, not now |
| Distinct addresses | 95 | Separate sites in the record, not separate buildings |
| Largest capacity in the record | 196 MW | Stated on 2 of 192 filings. Capacity is rarely published, so this is a floor, not a market total |
| Largest floor area filed | 504,219 SF | One permit, not a campus total. Floor area is published far more often than capacity |
| Operators we can name | 10 | 78 of 192 filings name a recognizable operator. The rest name an engineer, a builder or a holding company |
| Filings with no date published | 5 | The source publishes the facility, not the filing date |
Operators appearing by name: QTS (26), Aligned (23), CyrusOne (8), STACK Infrastructure (7), DataBank (3), Flexential (3), T5 Data Centers (3), Meta (2).
The filings that state a capacity
Most permits never mention megawatts. These do, and the basis matters: a figure the applicant stated for the project is a different claim from a generator nameplate, which is backup plant rather than sellable load.
| Capacity | Basis | The filing |
|---|---|---|
| 196 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | Edged Energy Outpost Building 2 |
| 196 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | Edged Energy Outpost Building 2 |
The most recent filings on the record
| Filed | Named on the filing | What it says | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 August 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | ACS Data Center Phase I Substation | Power and cooling |
| 3 August 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | Edged Energy Outpost Building 2 | Type not stated |
| 3 August 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | Edged Energy Outpost Building 2 | Type not stated |
| 1 July 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | ACS Data Center - Phase 2 Perimeter Fence | Expansion or phase |
| 1 July 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | ACS Data Center Campus - Substation Retaining Wall | Power and cooling |
| 18 June 2026 | QTS | Qts Ftw1 Dc1 Expansion Data Hall Upfit | Tenant fit-out |
| 18 June 2026 | QTS | Qts Ftw1 Dc1 Expansion | Expansion or phase |
| 16 June 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | ACS Data Center - DFW 13 | Tenant fit-out |
Collected from City of Fort Worth permit records, Plano, Allen and McKinney permit records, TCEQ air permit search, City of Denton permit records and City of Dallas permit records. A permit proves that construction is happening. It does not prove that space is available, and no public filing anywhere discloses what is contractible at a named building. That answer comes from an operator call, which is the part we do by hand. See how we verify capacity.