Tracking data center construction across the Denver metro.
One public inventory of every facility in the metro, tracked by status, with the technology shifts and the economic and ecological accounting that sit behind each project. Built entirely from public sources.
Construction, technology, and impact, reported together so a project is never just a building announcement.
Industrial building under construction (illustrative photo)
Every data center project in the metro, tracked by status: operating, under construction, and announced. Operator, city, and size where known, with announced entries clearly marked as unverified.
Server racks in a data center (illustrative photo)
The latest data center technology, explained. Liquid cooling, next generation AI racks, power procurement, and the efficiency metrics that decide whether a design is current or already dated.
Power and cooling infrastructure (illustrative photo)
Economic and ecological accounting, including water, per project. Investment, jobs, and taxes alongside power, cooling, water use, and what the operator has not disclosed.
From the October 1, 2026 example edition.
Vantage Data Centers is pursuing a project called Trident: a 143-acre campus in Aurora with a planned IT capacity of 334 MW. If built, it would be Colorado's largest data center.
The site sits in an industrial zone, which means city staff can approve it administratively, with no public hearing and no city council vote. That possibility has drawn organized community opposition, including petitions and town halls, with concerns about diesel backup generators and total power demand.
Announced entries reflect company statements and public filings. Capacity and timelines are not confirmed until construction starts.
Four signals from the current briefing. Full treatment in the latest edition.
Direct-to-chip liquid cooling has moved from option to requirement as rack densities climb past what air can handle. The market approached $3 billion in 2025, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden leads Department of Energy cooling research.
The Vera Rubin NVL72 platform is in production, with the first CoreWeave deployment in September 2026. Rack scale AI systems are resetting power and cooling design for every new build.
Meta has contracted up to 6.6 GW, with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft also signing nuclear agreements. Firm power, not just total power, is becoming the constraint on campus scale.
Average PUE remains near 1.55 and only 27 percent of operators track water. The European Union introduces mandatory A-to-G energy and water labels in August 2027, which will reset disclosure expectations.
Sponsorship slots are a future feature of this proof of concept. No sponsors are listed here.
Every data center project in the metro, grouped by status. Size is shown where a public figure exists. Announced entries are company announcements and public filings, labeled as announced and unverified until construction is confirmed.
Showing 29 facilities.
Figures are reproduced from public sources as reported. Where a size is not listed, no reliable public figure was available at the time of compilation.
The most consequential data center proposal in the Denver metro right now may never face a public vote. Planning documents filed with the City of Aurora, surfaced by an investigative report in September 2026, show Vantage Data Centers pursuing a project it calls Trident: a 143-acre campus in the Windler area near E-470 with two buildings totaling more than 860,000 square feet and a planned IT capacity of 334 megawatts, which would make it the largest data center in Colorado if built.
The reason it matters is process, not just scale. The site sits in an industrial zone, which means Aurora city staff can approve it administratively, with no public hearing and no city council vote. That possibility has drawn organized community opposition, including petitions and town halls, with residents raising concerns about diesel backup generators and the sheer power demand. State regulators prepared an environmental justice summary urging at least one community meeting before a permit application moves forward, noting the site's proximity to homes in a socioeconomically vulnerable area.
Vantage says it will develop the campus responsibly while addressing community concerns. As of October 1, the project is in early planning. No construction start has been confirmed, and no power or cooling design has been disclosed publicly. This is the single most important local project to watch: its scale, its approval path, and its community process will set the template for every large proposal that follows in the metro.
QTS, owned by Blackstone, is building Colorado's largest data center on a campus south of Denver International Airport. The first of three massive buildings is complete, the second is nearly finished, and the third building's footprint is being prepped. Total construction investment is estimated at more than $1 billion, with peak load around 160 to 177 megawatts, roughly four times the airport's own peak demand. QTS is paying for its own transmission infrastructure, including about $28 million in high-voltage lines and a substation, and its application to add 98 diesel backup generators is working through the state air-permit process. Aurora's economic development council reported the first building generated about $4.6 million in 2025 property taxes, with roughly 45 percent going to Aurora Public Schools, and projects about $200 million in investment for the second building.
CoreSite, the American Tower subsidiary headquartered in downtown Denver, has nearly completed the first building of its DE3 campus in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood: 180,000 square feet with 18 megawatts of critical power, topped off in October 2025. It is the first purpose-built colocation data center constructed in Denver in twenty years. The full campus is planned at about 600,000 square feet and 60 megawatts, but additional buildings cannot be permitted during Denver's one-year moratorium on new data center construction, which runs through May 21, 2027.
Flexential is building its fifth Denver-area data center in Parker on a 17-acre site: 249,000 square feet and 22.5 megawatts, designed for high-density and AI workloads. Construction topped out in early 2026 and the company is targeting a January 2027 opening, with pre-leasing underway since 2024. Power comes from the Core Electric Cooperative, and the facility will use waterless cooling. Douglas County is poised to approve a $19.3 million tax rebate for the project.
Denver is frozen until May 2027 under a unanimous city council moratorium. Thornton passed a one-year moratorium in September 2026 on new data centers larger than 50,000 square feet. Commerce City advanced a proposed six-month pause the same month. Aurora took a different path: it rejected a moratorium in August 2026 and instead directed staff to write dedicated data center regulations, while codifying a tiered water framework that bans new evaporative-cooled facilities. Both 2026 state data center bills died in the legislature, so Colorado has no statewide incentive program and no industry-specific environmental rules. The practical effect: nearly all current construction is concentrated in Aurora and Parker, with Denver proper on hold.
Liquid cooling is now mandatory for AI racks, and Golden is at the center of the research. Air cooling cannot handle racks above roughly 30 kilowatts, and NVIDIA's latest rack generations run past 120 kilowatts, making direct liquid cooling a requirement rather than an option. The liquid cooling market nearly doubled in 2025 to approaching $3 billion. Consolidation followed fast: Ecolab acquired CoolIT Systems for $4.75 billion and Trane Technologies acquired LiquidStack, both in March 2026. The local angle is real: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden runs one of the world's most efficient supercomputing data centers and leads technical evaluation for the Department of Energy's $40 million COOLERCHIPS advanced-cooling program.
NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform enters production. The Rubin generation, with 72 GPUs and 36 CPUs per liquid-cooled rack, entered production in July 2026, and CoreWeave brought up the first multi-rack Rubin cloud cluster in September. NVIDIA claims up to 30 times the agentic-AI throughput per megawatt of the prior generation, a vendor figure still awaiting independent confirmation. Analysts estimate each gigawatt of Rubin deployment generates about $40 billion in revenue, nearly 40 percent more than the previous generation.
Big Tech signs gigawatts of nuclear power. Exploratory interest converted to binding deals in 2025 and 2026. Meta contracted up to 6.6 gigawatts across existing plants and small modular reactor developers. Amazon contracted small modular reactors with Energy Northwest and took a stake in X-energy. Google and Kairos Power agreed to up to seven small modular reactors, and Microsoft's deal restarted Three Mile Island. Actual reactor electrons remain a 2030 story at the earliest, but the procurement wave signals where hyperscalers expect to get firm power. Locally, the parallel story is Xcel Energy's large-load proceedings at the Colorado utilities commission, where data centers account for the majority of projected energy growth and more than 1,900 megawatts of new large-load requests are queued through 2031.
Sustainability reporting stalls as the buildout accelerates. The Uptime Institute's 2025 survey found the industry's average power usage effectiveness stuck around 1.55, unchanged in a decade, while water tracking actually declined, with only 27 percent of operators now measuring water use. Meanwhile rack densities keep climbing. Relief may come from regulation: the European Union will impose mandatory A-to-G energy and water labels on data centers starting August 2027, with the top grade requiring power usage effectiveness at or below 1.15 and water usage effectiveness at or below 0.1.
Each edition features one project with full economic and ecological accounting. Fields with no public disclosure are marked as not disclosed. The blank fields are part of the story.
The campus represents more than $1 billion in construction investment, the largest data center investment in Colorado. QTS reports 400 to 600 construction workers on site and 70 to 85 permanent operations jobs at full buildout. The first building generated about $4.6 million in 2025 property taxes, with roughly 45 percent directed to Aurora Public Schools; the second building is projected at about $200 million in additional investment. QTS is funding its own grid connection, including about $28 million in high-voltage transmission lines and a substation. In June 2024, the Colorado utilities commission approved a confidential discounted economic development electricity rate for the campus; the terms were not disclosed. No community benefits agreement has been disclosed. Disclosure score: 3 of 5 (investment, jobs, and taxes disclosed; power rate terms and community benefits not disclosed).
Power: Peak load of 160 to 177 megawatts, roughly four times Denver International Airport's peak. The contracted power source and generation mix were not disclosed. On-site backup consists of 40 installed diesel generators plus 98 additional units in a pending state air-permit application. Testing regime and emissions figures were not disclosed.
Water: Cooling type was not disclosed. Water withdrawal and consumption figures were not disclosed. No water usage effectiveness figure has been published. For context only, and not as this project's figures: major hyperscaler fleets publicly report water usage effectiveness between 0.12 and 0.34 liters per kilowatt-hour, and industry surveys show only about a quarter of operators track water at all. Aurora's tiered water framework, codified in 2025, bans new evaporative-cooled facilities, which constrains the cooling options for any future expansion here. Whether the campus sits in a stressed watershed, and how much of the local supply it draws, could not be determined from public sources.
Community status: The generator expansion drew critical coverage from Colorado Public Radio in July 2026. Aurora rejected a moratorium on new data centers in August 2026 but directed staff to write dedicated regulations. No public hearing has been required for the campus to date. Disclosure score: 1 of 5 (scale and generator count are public through permits and press; power source, water, efficiency, and emissions undisclosed).
The takeaway: QTS Aurora is the most economically documented data center project in the metro and simultaneously one of the least ecologically transparent. The tax and jobs figures are public because they pass through government channels. The power and water figures are not, because nothing requires their disclosure. That gap is the central tension this report will track across every project, every edition.
All URLs below were visited during research on October 1, 2026. Announced, under-construction, and operating statuses are distinguished in the copy above.
Full economic and ecological accounting for Colorado's largest data center campus. Fields with no public disclosure are marked as not disclosed. The blank fields are part of the story.
Investment, jobs, and taxes disclosed. Power rate terms and community benefits not disclosed.
Scale and generator count are public through permits and press. Power source, water, efficiency, and emissions undisclosed.
Investment, employment, taxes, and grid costs as publicly reported.
The campus represents more than $1 billion in construction investment, the largest data center investment in Colorado. QTS is funding its own grid connection, including about $28 million in high-voltage transmission lines and a substation. In June 2024, the Colorado utilities commission approved a confidential discounted economic development electricity rate for the campus; the terms were not disclosed. No community benefits agreement has been disclosed.
Power, water, and community status. Water is tracked as a first-class metric.
No water usage effectiveness figure has been published for this campus. For context only, and not as this project's figures: major hyperscaler fleets publicly report water usage effectiveness between 0.12 and 0.34 liters per kilowatt-hour, and industry surveys show only about a quarter of operators track water at all. Aurora's tiered water framework, codified in 2025, bans new evaporative-cooled facilities, which constrains the cooling options for any future expansion here. Whether the campus sits in a stressed watershed, and how much of the local supply it draws, could not be determined from public sources.
Community status: The generator expansion drew critical coverage from Colorado Public Radio in July 2026. Aurora rejected a moratorium on new data centers in August 2026 but directed staff to write dedicated regulations. No public hearing has been required for the campus to date.
The takeaway: QTS Aurora is the most economically documented data center project in the metro and simultaneously one of the least ecologically transparent. The tax and jobs figures are public because they pass through government channels. The power and water figures are not, because nothing requires their disclosure. That gap is the central tension this report will track across every project, every edition.
Source basis: public reporting and filings compiled October 1, 2026. See the for the full list.
The Data Center Collective is a proof of concept for independent, public-source tracking of data center construction in the Denver metro, paired with plain-language technology coverage and per-project impact accounting.
Construction Tracker: every data center project in the metro, tracked by status as operating, under construction, or announced. The current inventory covers 29 facilities across Aurora, Denver, Englewood, Centennial, and neighboring cities.
Innovation Briefing: the latest data center technology, explained without hype: cooling, rack architecture, power procurement, and efficiency measurement, with the local research angle where one exists.
Impact Report: economic and ecological accounting per project, with water treated as a first-class metric. What is disclosed is reported. What is not disclosed is labeled as not disclosed, so gaps stay visible.
Public sources only. No non-public information is used, solicited, or published.
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This proof of concept is a static site: no paywall, no accounts, and no checkout. Pages are the homepage, the tracker, the latest edition, the sample impact report, and this about page.
Sponsorship and data products are noted as coming soon in the footer. No sponsor names are listed in this version.
Photography on this site is freely licensed and illustrative. No photo depicts a specific tracked facility.
Photo of New Orleans Data Centerby Fogo Solutions (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Doel Nuclear power plant cooling tower and windmillby Sally V (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Industrial building being built on Leeds Road (A62)by habiloid (CC BY-SA)
Rack of computers in a datacenterby Wil Weterings (public domain)