September 2026 in data centers.

September saw deal velocity spike 47% month-over-month to 44 transactions worth $51.5 billion across 1,142 MW, a striking inflection point in hyperscaler infrastructure M&A. Anthropic's $35 billion capacity acquisition on September 1st dominated the flow, followed by Equinix's $10 billion take of KKR assets and Nvidia's $3 billion OpenAI purchase—three mega-deals that account for 94% of monthly value and signal acute power scarcity at scale. The transaction count year-over-year grew 4,300%, though this reflects a depressed September 2025 baseline. Capital concentrated in power-constrained markets: Richland Parish and "One" each command 5,000 MW across just 10 facilities combined, while Ashburn's 4,296 MW across 161 sites underscores density concentration in the Virginia corridor. Las Cruces and Abilene—both emerging hyperscaler nodes in the Southwest power belt—captured 7,450 MW collectively, indicating a geographic rebalancing toward lower-congestion grids.

The 62.5% surge in deal value month-over-month, divorced from a proportional uptick in transaction count, points to forced consolidation of mega-scale capacity rather than market-driven incremental growth. Hyperscalers are now acquiring in clusters—9 facilities in Richland Parish, 161 in Ashburn—suggesting sellers recognize power as the binding constraint, not real estate. This pattern will likely sustain through Q4 2026 and into Q1 2027, as AI training demand outpaces grid interconnection timelines by 18–24 months. Expect further buyer concentration among Anthropic, Equinix, and hyperscaler captive fleets competing for existing operational capacity; greenfield development will remain bottlenecked by FERC queue depth and transmission upgrades, not capital availability.