The AI build-out got two conflicting verdicts on Wednesday, and both are true. Democrats' midterm sweep sent Big Tech stocks soaring — Amazon up 7.4%, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft up 2% to 6.3%, Apple up nearly 7% to a record high, good for more than $750 billion in combined market value — on a bet that a harder time building data centers actually helps the incumbents, according to Reuters. Investors figure that curbs on new construction lock in scarce compute, cap the industry's spending spiral, and ease the pressure on strained cash flows.
Then there's what voters actually voted for. Ohio ran 21 of the nation's 41 data-center ballot measures across 18 municipalities on Tuesday, and at least 14 of them passed bans or restrictions — including in Ashville, where residents voted to block a data center campus already under construction, as Fortune reported via the AI News Brief. This isn't moratorium-by-town-board anymore. It's a ballot veto that can land after groundbreaking, not before.
The rally makes a certain kind of sense: Big Tech plans to spend more than $740 billion on capacity this year, up from roughly $400 billion last year, and the market has been punishing anything that smells like unchecked capex. A Democratic wave — including landslide wins in places like Texas, where data-center opposition runs hot — promises friction, and friction is cheap scarcity for whoever already has the most servers.
But the scarcer the compute, the harder it gets to be one of the builders. AMD's quarter tells the demand side of the same story: data-center revenue nearly doubled to $8.5 billion, with guidance of about $17 billion next quarter. The demand isn't in doubt. What's in doubt is where the next megawatts get permitted, wired, and turned on — and after Tuesday, that's a question voters get to answer directly.
Watch next: whether other states follow Ohio's ballot playbook, whether state legislatures move to preempt local data-center bans, and whether the hyperscalers start pricing voter risk into site selection the way they price power. Data Center Watch counted $98 billion in projects blocked or delayed by opposition in spring 2025. That number now has a ballot box attached to it.
— via Reuters