Here’s how data centers became a billion-dollar real estate investment

The U.S. is home to the majority of the world’s data centers, with more than 2,800. The closest nation after that is the United Kingdom, with less than 400, according to the Data Center Map.

Data centers are the physical vertebrae of internet infrastructure, supporting cloud computing capabilities and artificial intelligence.

The value of the land where data centers are planned to be built is now soaring, 10 times the original price in one case from Vint Hill, Virginia.

Pat Lynch, executive managing director for the digital infrastructure business at commercial real estate brokerage CBRE, told CNBC that demand was already strong, but has recently soared, thanks to increased digitalization and AI.

Private equity has taken notice.

“It’s interesting when we look at our global business today, not just within real estate, but across the entire firm, we see data centers as the most exciting asset class,” Nadeem Meghji, global co-head of Blackstone Real Estate, said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” in May.

Landowners are now seeing the value of their properties soar because of their relative location to power grid access points.

“We do see that land gets more value when it is on the appropriate power line for a data center need,” said Rachel Wacker, executive director of the Greater Dallas County Development Alliance. “My experience again working with data centers is they do value that and they do come to the table aggressively, in order to obtain that land.”

Watch the video above to learn more about how data centers became a billion-dollar real estate market.