October 2026 study
Northern Virginia data center pipeline after the Digital Gateway
All 4 Northern Virginia projects on our tracker that are approved or under construction are outside Loudoun and Fairfax. The largest blocked project in our nine markets, the Prince William Digital Gateway, counts as zero in our megawatt totals because its applicants never stated power. We estimate it at 4.0 to 6.3 GW.
By Czarina Tabayoyong, Founder, Critical Path Hiring. Former Amazon, AWS and Google recruiter.
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Findings
- 4 of 10 tracked Northern Virginia projects are approved or under construction, in Stafford, Culpeper and Prince William counties. All 4 tracked projects in Loudoun and Fairfax are proposals.
- Amazon is named on 3 of the 10: Culpeper Technology Zone, Devlin Technology Park and Amazon Warrenton. Amazon also posts 358 of the 463 Virginia data center openings in our hyperscaler jobs index.
- 22 of the 31 stalled or cancelled projects in our nine markets state no capacity. The 9 that do add up to 3,325 MW, the figure in our pushback labor study.
- 8 blocked projects state floor area only, 35.8 million square feet. At the capacity-to-area ratios of tracked projects that state both, that is about 6.3 to 9.8 GW, roughly 1.9 to 3.0 times the stated count. These are estimates.
- The Digital Gateway is 64% of that floor area. Our 4.0 to 6.3 GW estimate for it is higher than the Piedmont Environmental Council's "at a minimum" figure of 2 to 3 GW, the only other published estimate we found.
County split
- Approved or under construction
- Proposed, stalled or cancelled
| Project | County | Stage | Developer | Size as stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stafford Technology Campus | Stafford | Under construction | Stack Infrastructure; Peterson Cos. won the rezoning | Over 1 GW across 19 data centers on about 500 acres |
| EdgeCore Culpeper | Culpeper | Approved | EdgeCore | 120 acres, 216 MW to start with room for 432 MW, 1.4 million sq ft |
| Culpeper Technology Zone | Culpeper | Approved | Amazon and others | 1,000-acre zone; county expects 7 new campuses |
| Devlin Technology Park | Prince William (Bristow) | Approved | Amazon Data Services, which bought about 70% of the site from Stanley Martin | 270 acres, up to 3.5 million sq ft and 3 substations |
| Equinix DC-23, Beaumeade campus | Loudoun (Ashburn) | Proposed | Equinix | Not stated |
| Plaza 500 | Fairfax (near Alexandria) | Proposed | Starwood Capital Group | About 34 acres; planned substation about 176 MW |
| Chantilly (3721 Stonecroft Blvd.) | Fairfax (Chantilly) | Proposed | Starwood Capital Group | Nearly 42 acres |
| Leesburg Gateway | Loudoun (Leesburg) | Proposed | The Peterson Companies | 3 data center buildings on 107 acres |
| Amazon Warrenton | Fauquier (Warrenton) | Stalled | Amazon | 42 acres |
| Prince William Digital Gateway | Prince William | Cancelled | QTS and Compass | About 2,100 acres, 23 million sq ft |
Blocked capacity
- Stated, or low estimate
- High estimate
| Blocked project, floor area only | Market | Million sq ft | Estimated MW |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prince William Digital Gateway | Northern Virginia | 23.0 | 4,020 to 6,330 |
| Tract Yuma and Perryville Roads rezoning request | Phoenix | 5.6 | 980 to 1,540 |
| Liberty Road data center campus | Atlanta | 4.4 | 770 to 1,210 |
| Project Midway | Phoenix | 1.3 | 220 to 340 |
| Oakline at Mill Creek (Salem) | Hillsboro | 0.60 | 100 to 170 |
| Chandler AI data center and business complex | Phoenix | 0.42 | 70 to 120 |
| Highway 85 North data center | Atlanta | 0.30 | 50 to 80 |
| Project Kilo (Kenyon Road and Route 25) | Chicago | 0.20 | 30 to 60 |
Hiring impact
On our tracker, the next Northern Virginia sites to need commissioning and operations teams are the Stafford Technology Campus, EdgeCore and the Amazon campus in Culpeper, and Devlin Technology Park in Bristow. Loudoun County, home to the Ashburn cluster, has two tracked projects, both proposals. For candidates who live near Ashburn, the next site is a longer commute or a relocation, so commute and per diem belong in the first conversation.
Amazon is named on three of the ten projects and posts 358 of the 463 hyperscaler data center openings in Virginia. Commissioning firms and contractors on those sites hire from the same technician pool Amazon's own postings draw on. For the quarter-by-quarter timing of commissioning windows, see the commissioning collision study.
The Digital Gateway was planned as a 10-year build. It was the largest project by floor area on any of our nine trackers, and it never appeared in our megawatt totals.
Method and limits
- Northern Virginia: the 10 projects in our Northern Virginia tracker as of 2026-10-26. Counties are taken from each project's source.
- Capacity estimate: 24 tracked projects state both MW and floor area. Their ratio runs from 77 to 511 MW per million square feet, median 232. We use the middle half, 175 to 275, for the low and high estimates. Where only a first phase states both, the first-phase figures are used.
- Digital Gateway figures: acreage, floor area and building count from the rezoning as reported; the county's finance estimate of $24.7 billion in investment is reported by Data Center Frontier. Dominion told the Prince William Times in 2022 that it was too early to know the size of the power need. Cancellation: Virginia Business.
- Floor area is a rough proxy for power. A campus planned for AI training load can carry far more MW per square foot than an older enterprise building, so treat each estimate as a scale.
- A blocked project's MW would have been built in phases over years, so the totals here are capacity, not workers needed at one time.
Questions
- How big was the Prince William Digital Gateway?
- The rezoning covered about 2,139 acres and 23.0 million square feet in about 37 buildings. The applicants never stated a power figure. Using the median ratio of capacity to floor area on 24 tracked projects that state both, we estimate about 4.0 to 6.3 GW. The project was cancelled in July 2026.
- Where are new Northern Virginia data centers being built?
- Of the 10 Northern Virginia projects on our tracker, 4 are approved or under construction, and all 4 are in Stafford, Culpeper and Prince William counties. The 4 tracked projects in Loudoun and Fairfax are all still proposals.
- How much data center capacity has been blocked or cancelled?
- Across our nine markets, 31 projects are stalled or cancelled. 9 state capacity, 3,325 MW in total. Another 8 state only floor area, 35.8 million square feet, which we estimate at 6.3 to 9.8 GW. 14 state neither.
Related
Blocked capacity and jobs
Construction jobs tied to the projects that were stalled or denied.
Hyperscaler jobs index
Open data center roles at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle, by state and role type.
Commissioning collision
Quarters when several tracked projects need commissioning crews at the same time.
Hiring call
Book a hiring call and we'll talk through which roles your build needs and when to bring them on.
Czarina Tabayoyong
Founder and principal recruiter, Critical Path Hiring. Czarina recruits commissioning, MEP, power and critical facilities people for data center builds. She previously recruited cloud and data center architecture talent at AWS Professional Services, and PMO and project delivery talent for hyperscale data center campuses in Texas and Virginia.