By Alistair Barr
Publication Date: 2026-11-05 10:00:00
The backlash against AI data centers delivered a stunning political upset in Tuesday’s midterm elections. But the biggest winners may turn out to be the tech giants that have already built many of these
Voters across the US sent a clear message Tuesday: They want to slow or stop the construction of new data centers. That could make it much harder for the AI industry to keep up with soaring demand.
Goldman warned the election results could lead to restrictions affecting roughly 45% of planned US data center expansion.
The biggest shock came in Texas, where Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Hinojosa has promised to immediately pause data center development in a state that’s home to some of America’s largest AI projects.
That sounds like terrible news for Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, the world’s biggest data center operators.
Yet their shares jumped on Wednesday, while smaller AI cloud providers, including CoreWeave and…
