Stargate AI Data Center under construction in Abilene, Texas, USA on Tuesday, September 23, 2025. Stargate is an Open, Oracle and SoftBank collaboration with promotional support from President Donald Trump, creating data centers and other infrastructure for artificial intelligence across the United States.
Kyle Grillo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
For decades, global real estate revolved around what you could see – sparkling office towers, shopping malls and trophy hotels, but it has more and more moved to “invisible” properties, clouds and data centers.
“The real estate world has changed from what I call “visible” to “invisible,” said Kishore Moorjani, CEO of the Capitaland Investment’s Alternatives and Private Funds team.
“(It’s) everything we can’t see, but we use it. The cloud lives in the data centres, as we like to call it,” he said at a panel at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore. “That’s what drives a shift in value.”
According to a recent 2025 data center investors’ profit survey by real estate services company CBRE, 95% of leading investors worldwide plan to increase their investment in data centers worldwide. Of the 92 major investors who voted, 41% said they plan to allocate more than $500 million in capital to the data center sector in 2025, compared to 30% last year.
Data center demand has skyrocketed in recent years, driven primarily by the explosion of AI workloads, requiring vast computing power, power, cooling and networking infrastructure. Goldman Sachs predicts global electricity demand from data centers will rise by 50% by 2027 and 165% by 2030.
Stuart Crow, CEO of APAC Capital Markets, global real estate firm JLL, said investors are moving to traditional sectors and alternatives to reassign their portfolios.
“The majority of it is data centers and now it’s the battery storage and infrastructure associated with it,” he said on the same panel.
Goodwin Gaw, who manages the principal of GAW Capital Partners, another panelist, added that his company is investing in data centers in China.
Capital constraints?
However, the panelists pointed out. While the appetites of global data centres are strong, the pace and size of these projects put a strain on traditional lenders, the panelists said.
“Banks are certainly challenging their data center exposure given the enormous amount and volume of ongoing builds, considering the cost to implement that capability,” said Moorjani of Capitaland Investment.
According to Columbia Business School, hyperscale facilities (large data centers) range from $12 million per megawatt, while the latest hyperscale data centers range from 150 to 300 megawatts. A facility with an AI-centric facility that exceeds 1 gigawatt requires billions of dollars in investment.
Gigawatts are 1,000 megawatts of electricity, while megawatts are 1 million watts.
“I think it’s getting more and more nervous when the banks are starting to get a little nervous,” added Muyani.
The Boston Consulting Group estimates that HyperScalers will need to invest around $1.8 trillion between 2024 and 2030 to meet AI and cloud demand.
“So the biggest question mark for the real estate community is whether there is enough capital at this point,” said JLL’s Crow.
The panelists also said the rise of artificial intelligence could allow businesses to rebuild physical real estate, particularly office space, to reduce staffing and adjust office footprint needs.
In a report published in September, Real Estate Consultant Suvils predicted that global real estate investment rebounds this year will be slower. Global commercial real estate investment is expected to increase by 8% from last year to 2025, well below the 27% previously forecast by the company.
The report shows that many developers face obstacles such as rising construction costs, financing constraints, labor shortages and regulatory complexity. Still, a large pool of undeveloped capital remains available, with players at key institutions showing little indication that they will abandon real estate as a core asset class.
