Tennessee is at the forefront of data center proliferation and is set to continue receiving significant investments in new projects which could lead to higher energy costs, according to a report released by ThinkTennessee.
Over the past decade, Tennessee has benefited from a shift in tech-sector investment away from California toward more tax- and regulatory-friendly states. Before the latest Artificial Intelligence data center boom, Tennessee was already seeing new data center construction, as evidenced by Google’s 2018 building of its data center in Clarksville and Facebook’s 2020 Gallatin facility.
Construction kicked into a higher gear when xAI, an Elon Musk company, started building one of the largest data centers by power consumption in Memphis in 2024…