From SoftBank's massive €75 billion commitment in France and construction kicking off on the Stargate megacampus in Michigan to Ohio suspending its data center tax incentives and the EU moving to restrict US hyperscalers from sensitive cloud contracts – it's been another packed stretch for the sector. Plus, more data centers are at risk for severe weather than you think, according to a new report. Here's a roundup of the latest data center developments.

US Development: Stargate Builds, Ohio Pushes Back

Construction is officially underway on the massive Oracle/OpenAI Stargate campus in Saline Township, Michigan, with the first of three 550,000 sq ft data center buildings almost complete. The long-awaited megaproject has been in the pipeline for years but has faced delays due to funding challenges. Meanwhile, Applied Digital has signed a pre-lease for its new 430MW Polaris Forge 3 campus with the same unnamed investment-grade hyperscaler that previously committed to its Delta Forge 1 site. And cryptominer and AI data center firm TeraWulf has acquired a 1GW site in Eastern Kentucky, targeting an initial 500MW by late 2028. TeraWulf is backed by a 14% investment from Google.

Not every development is a green light, however. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has suspended the state's data center tax break as the incentive's cost ballooned well beyond projections and community opposition intensified. Residents are now pursuing a ballot referendum that could permanently ban hyperscale data centers statewide – potentially the strictest such measure under consideration anywhere in the US. It’s a notable change of course for one of the country's most active data center markets. At the same time, a new report adds a broader note of caution: 56% of planned US data centers are being built in states at high risk of severe weather. That reportedly puts nearly $800 billion in investment directly in the path of tornadoes, hurricanes, and winter storms.

International Development: France Emerges as Europe's AI Capital

France is garnering unprecedented AI investment, thanks in part to its nuclear-heavy grid, competitive industrial power prices, and a government rolling out the welcome mat. The biggest story: SoftBank is making a massive €75 billion ($87.5 billion) bet on France, unveiling plans to develop 5GW of AI data center capacity. The project kicks off in partnership with state-owned utility EDF, targeting an initial 3.1GW in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031. At the Choose France Summit, Brookfield also announced it’s upping its French AI infrastructure commitment to €30 billion – a €10 billion increase from its February pledge – developing two campuses through Data4 in Cambrai and Escaudain. Meanwhile, investment firm Ardian and its data center platform Verne are planning a 500MW campus near Paris, with 200MW expected by 2030.

Elsewhere in Europe, the Nordics continue to build out. Arcem has acquired land in Joroinen, Finland for a campus scalable to 500MW – with 60MW available as early as 2027 – while Winda Energy is planning a 100MW facility in Finnish Lapland. In Norway, BW Group has signed a deal for a 250MW campus in Telemark County, and atNorth announced a 350MW campus in Haugaland. Google has broken ground on its first self-developed facility in Horndal, Sweden, designed with air cooling and waste heat recovery. Meanwhile, AWS has revealed plans for a new data center in Maintal, Germany as part of its existing $9.44 billion regional investment. Equinix has officially opened its MD5 data center in Madrid – a €460 million facility reinforcing the Spanish capital's position as Southern Europe's primary interconnection hub.

In Australia, AI cloud firm Iren announced a planned 800MW data center campus in Bundey. And Stockland has filed for a 250MW data center in Melbourne, while GreenSquareDC has withdrawn its 120MW application in Perth after community concerns over proximity to a river and a nearby school.

Deals and Policy: Iren's Blackwell Bet and New EU Cloud Rules

Iren has signed a $1.6 billion contract with Dell to acquire air-cooled Blackwell systems for its Childress, Texas data centers – part of a broader $3.4 billion AI cloud contract with Nvidia that also sees the chip giant investing up to $2.1 billion in Iren and backing up to 5GW of AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, the EU is reportedly drafting restrictive cloud procurement rules that could bar U.S. hyperscalers from lucrative state contracts. According to Reuters, the proposal would block foreign providers from 'sensitive' government tenders in banking, healthcare, and energy – posing a threat to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud if it wins backing from all 27 EU member states. At Computex 2026, Intel and Foxconn announced a rack-scale development partnership, with Foxconn also serving as a manufacturing partner for Nvidia's newly integrated Groq 3 LPX rack systems.

Energy: PPAs and a Grid Simulation Tool

Google signed a 200MW, 15-year solar PPA with Enlight's US subsidiary Clēnera in Oklahoma, while a 25MW solar farm in New South Wales backed by Google and AirTrunk is nearing grid connection. Meanwhile, Microsoft signed a 140MW solar PPA with Avangrid in Washington state – its fourth deal with the firm, bringing total contracted capacity to about 500MW. In Norway, Nscale inked a PPA with state-owned power company Vattenfall to cover a significant portion of power needs at its 230MW Kvandal data center starting in 2027.

At the same time, the US Department of Energy has launched Agora, a test platform simulating how hyperscale AI campuses interact with the grid. The platform models the volatile, high-density power behavior of GPU clusters that can ramp from near-idle to full load in seconds.

Next-Gen Technology: Quantum Milestones and a New GPU Challenger

Microsoft has unveiled Majorana 2, its latest topological quantum chip, claiming it’s 1,000 times more reliable than its predecessor, with qubits now surviving an average of 20 seconds rather than milliseconds. The company says the chip puts it on track for a scalable quantum computer by 2029 – cutting its previous timeline in half. Not to be outdone, IBM announced a massive five-year, $10 billion quantum investment to accelerate its own post-2029 roadmap for fault-tolerant systems. The investment includes spinning out a standalone subsidiary in Albany, New York, called Anderon.

Meanwhile, at Computex, Intel detailed Crescent Island, a 350W, air-cooled PCIe inference accelerator packing 480GB of LPDDR5X memory instead of standard HBM. It’s a pragmatic pitch trading lower bandwidth for greater capacity, targeting enterprise operators running mid-tier workloads without liquid cooling overhead. Whether it gains traction depends on how it’s priced.