Swedish construction giant Skanska has landed a massive $1.2-billion contract to build four new data centers in the southeastern United States, putting the company squarely in the path of one of America’s fastest-growing infrastructure booms.
The deal, valued at roughly SEK 11.2 billion, was signed with an existing Skanska client and will be recorded in the company’s U.S. order bookings for the third quarter of 2026, according to Skanska’s August 20 announcement.
But there is one major piece of information Skanska isn’t revealing.
The company has not identified the customer—and it has not disclosed exactly where the four massive facilities will be built.
That secrecy adds intrigue to a contract arriving at a time when some of the world’s biggest technology companies are racing to secure land, electricity and computing capacity for artificial intelligence and cloud services.
Four Data Centers, More Than 800,000 Square Feet
Skanska said the four facilities will have a combined area of approximately 75,000 square meters, or 808,000 square feet.
The contractor’s scope will extend well beyond putting up the exterior structures. It includes the building shells as well as interior fit-outs for technical areas, support spaces and offices.
Construction is scheduled to begin during the third quarter of 2026, meaning work is expected to get underway within the current quarter.
Completion is targeted for the third quarter of 2028.
Skanska has so far described the location only as the southeastern region of the United States.
The Timing Is No Accident
Skanska has not said that the confidential customer’s four facilities will specifically be used for artificial intelligence, so it would be premature to label them outright as “AI data centers.”
But the timing of the deal is impossible to separate from the extraordinary infrastructure race unfolding across the United States.
A recent JLL report found that North American data-center demand reached a record 25 gigawatts of absorption during the first half of 2026, double the year-earlier level. JLL said hyperscalers, AI companies and newer cloud-computing providers are fighting for increasingly scarce capacity.
The construction boom is already spilling into industries far beyond Silicon Valley.
Reuters reported this week that manufacturers supplying generators, electrical equipment, cooling systems, cables, steel components and construction machinery are benefiting from surging U.S. data-center investment.
Even traditional heavy-equipment giant Caterpillar has pointed to AI-related data-center construction as a significant source of demand for its power-generation and construction equipment.
Why the U.S. Southeast Is Becoming Increasingly Important
The location is also notable.
While Northern Virginia has long been America’s dominant data-center hub, developers are increasingly searching for new markets where they can find sufficient land and—more importantly—electricity.
S&P Global Energy reported in August that 173 data centers are planned across the U.S. Southeast over roughly the next five to six years, representing an estimated 9.6 gigawatts of additional electricity demand.
That growth is forcing utilities to rethink power-generation and transmission plans as artificial intelligence and cloud computing push electricity requirements sharply higher.
The Southeast’s role in the construction pipeline was also highlighted by ConstructConnect, which reported that the U.S. South accounted for well over half of planned data-center construction spending it was tracking earlier this year.
Skanska Has Been Quietly Building a Data-Center Powerhouse
For Skanska, the $1.2-billion award is not an isolated bet.
The company says it has experience with more than 250 data centers and averages around 500 megawatts of data-center work in progress annually in its U.S. operations.
Skanska has also announced a string of American data-center contracts over the past year.
In December 2025, it disclosed a $263-million contract for a new U.S. data center, with construction scheduled from early 2026 through the third quarter of 2027.
Another contract announced around the same period was worth $256 million.
In Georgia, Skanska later signed a $255-million supplemental data-center contract, while separate projects in Virginia have added tens of millions of dollars more to its order book.
Against those disclosed individual contracts, the new $1.2-billion four-facility package stands out for its sheer scale.
The Bigger Challenge May Not Be Construction
Building the structures themselves is only part of America’s data-center race.
Electricity availability is emerging as one of the industry’s biggest constraints.
AI data centers can require enormous amounts of continuous power, and grid-connection delays are forcing developers and utilities to consider new generation, transmission infrastructure and even on-site power systems.
The pressure is becoming so significant that data-center expansion is increasingly running into political and community resistance over electricity rates, water consumption, land use and environmental impacts.
JLL said that while 79% of Americans support U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence, only 14% support data-center development in their own communities—a striking gap that could complicate future expansion.
Reuters has also documented moves by governments and regulators to impose tighter requirements on new data centers as concerns grow about electricity, water and community impacts.
That means Skanska’s newest contract is about more than four buildings.
It is another visible piece of a much bigger scramble to construct the physical infrastructure needed for the next generation of computing.
And with Skanska keeping both its customer and the exact locations under wraps, the biggest unanswered question may be who is prepared to spend $1.2 billion to put four enormous data centers in the American Southeast—and what computing power will ultimately run inside them.
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