The AI data-center boom hits a wall of transformers and permits

Roughly half of the AI data-center capacity planned for 2026 in the U. S. is now expected to slip or be cancelled, with only about 5 of 12 announced gigawatts under active construction. The bottleneck isn’t chips but the grid: substation-transformer lead times have stretched past 160 weeks, and permitting and interconnection add years after approval. The squeeze persists even as Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft pour a combined $650 billion-plus into capacity this year.