The country’s largest technology companies are expected to spend more than $800 billion this year investing in data centers and artificial intelligence.

But new data suggests the local backlash to data centers may be taking a meaningful bite out of that boom.

At least $260 billion of data center investments were canceled this year after sustained local opposition, according to new Heatmap Pro data.

The pace and size of those cancellations is picking up. About $130 billion in data center investment — or about half of the total — was canceled in the three months ending on September 30. And in dollar terms, the size of canceled projects in the third quarter of 2026 exceeded the size of all data center projects canceled last year.

Roughly $1 trillion in data center investment now faces some kind of sustained or meaningful local opposition, according to Heatmap Pro data. About half of all projects that have met local backlash this year were ultimately canceled, our data suggests.

Our market intelligence service Heatmap Pro tracks local projects and regulations affecting clean energy, batteries, and data centers. We run a continuous survey of public officials, regulatory filings, and local media to monitor energy and data center cancellations nationwide.

Our investment figures, which have not been previously published and are larger than other estimates, are likely an undercount. Only about 60% of data center projects disclose the size of their planned investment, especially during a proposal’s early stage when it is most likely to run aground.

But the totals show that the surging backlash to data centers is beginning to kill a sizable share of large computing projects. In August, a Heatmap Pro and Embold Research poll found that 75% of Americans would oppose a data center getting built near where they live.

“The number of canceled data centers speaks to the vast and growing grassroots opposition to these projects in communities across the country. The fact that many of these projects were defeated in just the past few months speaks to the upward trajectory of this opposition movement,” Mitch Jones, a policy director at Food and Water Watch, an environmental group that opposes AI data centers, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Data Center Coalition, which advocates for the industry, did not respond before press time.

Most canceled data center projects in our database are terminated because they fail to secure a local permit or face a hostile local government action. Hundreds of U.S. counties and towns now maintain a ban or moratorium on data center construction, our data shows. The Senate’s bipartisan permitting reform proposal would not affect towns or counties’ ability to prohibit data center development under their jurisdiction.