The rapid expansion in the construction of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers is projected to increasingly compete for resources with traditional public infrastructure initiatives, potentially impacting projects such as road and bridge improvements. This assessment comes from a recent Bloomberg report, which highlights a growing strain on construction materials and labor.
In 2025, state and local governments reportedly sold a record amount of debt for the second consecutive year, signaling significant planned investment in public works. Strategists are forecasting an additional $600 billion in such debt sales for the upcoming year, with the bulk of these funds typically designated for various infrastructure undertakings.
Concurrently, private sector investment in data center construction has reached an annualized run rate surpassing $41 billion, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. This level of private spending for data infrastructure is roughly equivalent to the total state and local government expenditure on transportation construction, underscoring the scale of resource demand from the AI sector.
This parallel surge in both public and private construction is expected to exacerbate existing labor shortages within the construction industry. Factors contributing to these shortages include an aging workforce heading towards retirement and the effects of recent immigration policies, which could intensify the competition for skilled tradespeople and general laborers.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk, a prominent architecture and design software maker, commented to Bloomberg, asserting "absolutely no doubt" that data center construction "sucks resources from other projects." Anagnost further predicted, "I guarantee you a lot of those [infrastructure] projects are not going to move as fast as people want," indicating potential delays for publicly funded works as resources are diverted to meet private sector demands for AI infrastructure. This dynamic is poised to create a bottleneck in project delivery across both segments of the construction economy.
