CoreWeave $6 billion Lancaster data center

CoreWeave is building its CoreWeave $6 billion Lancaster data center less than 20 miles from Mount Joy, Pennsylvania farmland that drew more than 50 purchase offers in a single year. The build, captured in CNBC's Inside The Real Estate Rush Behind AI, shows how power access now decides where AI infrastructure lands.

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Companies working on this

Profiles of the companies named in this story, with funding and a one-liner from our database.

Meta

$40.1B

Leading social media and technology platform connecting billions of people globally.

Amazon

$35.0B

Global e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence company.

CNBC

A global leader in business news and financial market coverage.

Microsoft

A global technology leader providing software, cloud services, AI, and devices for individuals and businesses.

Bobby Thompson and Michelle Kennedy have farmed there for decades. They placed an easement to lock their land for farming only, but neighbors have applied to rezone for an industrial park.

The tension is not local.

Why Lancaster and Boise keep selling out

Lancaster offers a reliable electrical grid, state incentives, and a Mid-Atlantic location near multiple large cities. That combination is pulling AI builders into rural Pennsylvania despite community pushback.

Boise tells the same story at larger scale. Micron is building two massive fabs nearby and Meta is building an enormous data center 10 to 15 miles away, pumping tens of billions into the local economy.

Developer Mike Adler controls 1,000 acres and $1 billion of Idaho real estate, growing from 1.9 million sq ft to 4.6 million. He says 62% of his current Boise Valley projects are spec builds, constructed before a tenant is signed.

Demand downstream is already measurable. Air Filter Superstore founder Phil Dugan grew from under $10 million in annual revenue pre-2020 to more than triple that, expanding from 7,000 sq ft to over 30,000 sq ft after investing about $1 million.

Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta spent over $167 billion combined in Q2 2026, up 79% year over year. Micron plans $250 billion in U.S. investment through 2035.

Powered land sets the price, and the ceiling

Investors spent nearly $6 billion on U.S. land earmarked for future data centers in the first half of 2026, up 79% and about 27% of all development site spending. There are already more than 4,700 data centers in the U.S.

The premium is for powered land. Sites with large power access have exceeded $8 million per acre in Northern Virginia and the Northeast, and the world needs an estimated 40,000 acres of it to meet growth through 2030.

Speculators often buy before they know if they can get permits or power. In Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro said of more than 100 proposals only five have permits to operate, and he signed an August executive order to block cost pass-throughs to residents and limit water use.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has directed regulators to require data centers to fully fund their own electric infrastructure. U.S. electricity consumption is projected to rise nearly 2% annually through 2030, more than twice the prior decade rate, and near term power shortages already add a year just to assess distribution to a site.

Values in Boise have hit 15 times pre-Covid levels, and brokers expect much of the remaining farmland to convert to industrial within five to seven years, though if power does not arrive, that land stays illiquid.