MW It's official: More money is now spent building data centers than the government spends on transportation
By Steve Goldstein
Visitors look at Gigabyte's modular AI data center display during Computex in Taipei on June 2, 2026.
A notable milestone was quietly reached, according to the April construction-spending report released by the Census Bureau on Monday: construction spending on data centers has overtaken public spending on transportation.
The word "quietly" is used because data-center spending is not even broken out in the government's press release. It's part of the broader "office" category, and to find the data-center expenditure, there's a separate set of itemized data called value put in place.
First, a few caveats. Transportation construction spending, as the government defines it, refers to structures used for transportation, such as airport hangars, bus terminals, railroad tracks and marinas. It doesn't include highways and streets, which are a separate category.
And secondly, it is just one month. Still, the trend is very clear - spending on the construction of data centers is surging.
In April, it rose 28% year-over-year to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $50.7 billion, just exceeding transportation construction spending's $49.3 billion.
This explosive spending is being reflected in the stock market. Sterling Infrastructure $(STRL)$, which handles site development, clearing, underground utilities and massive concrete foundations for AI-ready data centers, has quadrupled in value over the last year. Comfort Systems USA $(FIX)$, a provider of mechanical, electrical and plumbing building systems, has tripled.
Executives speaking at the Computex conference in Taiwan on Tuesday said the AI build-out still has room to run. Lip Bu-Tan of Intel $(INTC)$ and Matt Murphy of Marvell Technology $(MRVL)$ each spoke about the explosive growth of data centers.
-Steve Goldstein
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June 02, 2026 09:01 ET (13:01 GMT)
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