By Rajwa Quasim
Skanska, a Swedish construction company, signed a contract worth $1.19 billion to build four new data centers in the southeastern United States. The company did not disclose the identity of the customer but mentioned them as an “existing client.”
The contract, valued at 11.2 billion Swedish krona, is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2026 and completion expected in 2028. The project will have a combined area of about 75,000 square meters and includes the construction of shell and interior fit-out for technical spaces, support areas, and office functions by Skanska.
“This project strengthens our position in the rapidly growing data center sector,” the company stated.
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The southeastern part of the country has become a major center for data center construction due to lower electricity costs, tax incentives, and access to major optic fiber networks. As AI companies expand their computing capacity, data center construction is surging in states such as Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina. Skanska’s latest contract adds to a series of data center projects the company has secured in the region.
According to Skanska, the company signed an initial contract in July with an existing client to build a data center in Virginia. The contract is worth $94 million, about 870 million Swedish krona, which will be included in the U.S. order bookings for the second quarter 2026. The project includes the construction of a 19,500 square-meter data center, including four data halls, associated site work, and underground site utilities. Construction will start in October 2026 and will be completed in May 2028.
In June, the company announced a contract with an existing client to build a data center in Georgia. The contract is worth $255 million, or about 2.3 billion Swedish kronor. Construction began in March 2026 and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2028.
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The growing scale of AI infrastructure and the AI boom have attracted interest from several tech giants, including Microsoft, Google and Anthropic. Earlier, Meta Platforms and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, partnered to develop and operate a massive data center campus in El Paso, Texas. The deal is valued at roughly $14 billion. The campus is one of 28 data centers that Meta currently has in operation or under construction across the country.
Companies such as Nvidia will also provide financial guarantees worth $250 billion to support OpenAI’s plan to lease a 10-gigawatt AI data center project being built by SoftBank’s energy division in southern Ohio. Nvidia has also announced a $1 billion investment in an AI project by South Korean internet company Naver.