The Center for Digital Infrastructure (CDI) is your leading source for news, data, and policy on America’s digital infrastructure, including data centers and battery energy storage systems.
Digital infrastructure comprises the physical systems and hardware networks that enable the transmission, processing, and storage of data. Similar to traditional public utilities like transportation and electrical grids, it serves as the foundational architecture for modern economic activity and daily digital communication.
Operationally, data transmissions—such as mobile messaging, media streaming, financial transactions, and cloud computing—rely on a coordinated network of physical assets. This network includes data centers, fiber-optic cabling, network routing hardware, and localized power systems that collectively manage data traffic with minimal latency. Consequently, cloud computing functions not as a virtual concept, but through a tangible framework of industrial facilities and energy infrastructure.
Specialized industrial facilities designed to house and manage the computer servers and storage hardware that power the internet. These buildings provide high-capacity power, cooling systems to prevent overheating, and secure physical space required to keep digital services running 24/7.
Physical facilities or containerized installations that utilize rechargeable batteries to store electrical energy from the power grid or generation sources. These systems capture surplus electricity during periods of low demand or high renewable generation and discharge it back into the grid when demand peaks, stabilizing the power supply and supporting grid reliability.
Infrastructure systems that use strands of glass or plastic fibers—each thinner than a human hair—to transmit data as pulses of light. These networks serve as the high-speed backbone of modern telecommunications, moving vast amounts of information across long distances with significantly higher bandwidth and lower signal loss than traditional copper wires.
The United States is engaged in one of the most consequential competitions in its history—not only for leadership in artificial intelligence, but for leadership in the technologies, industries, and innovations that will define the twenty-first century.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating advances in medicine, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, defense, scientific research, financial services, cybersecurity, communications, and countless other fields. Every one of these sectors depends upon one essential resource: digital infrastructure.
Data centers have become the factories of the information age. Just as railroads, highways, ports, and electric power networks defined economic leadership in previous generations, digital infrastructure now underpins America’s economic strength, military readiness, scientific innovation, and technological leadership.
Around the world, governments recognize this reality. Nations are investing aggressively in advanced computing capacity, modern electric grids, battery storage, semiconductor manufacturing, communications networks, and the energy systems required to support them. They understand that the countries possessing the greatest computing capability will enjoy significant advantages across nearly every sector of the global economy.
The question is no longer whether this infrastructure will be built.
The question is where it will be built—and which nations will benefit from the investment, innovation, jobs, tax base, and technological leadership that accompany it.
Click here or on the map to the right to discover where data centers and other digital network infrastructure are located in the United States.
Map and data is courtesy of datacentermap.org, a research organization which has been compiling the most comprehensive resource for mapping data centers since 2007.
Click here for some of the latest stories about digital infrastructure from across the Internet.
Click here to learn about some of the common concerns around data centers, BESS, and other infrastructure, and how developers and engineers are addressing them in new facilities.
Click here to read about some of the largest and most impactful facilities in development and operation today.