Digital Realty Trust (DLR) Nareit REITweek: 2025 Investor Conference summary

Business overview and demand drivers

• Supports 5,000 customers in 50 metropolitan areas across six continents, focusing on digital transformation, cloud computing, and AI infrastructure growth.

• Operates over 300 data centers with nearly 3 GW of capacity and an additional 4 GW in development.

• Achieved a record $1 billion in bookings last year, with strong performance in both enterprise and hyperscale segments.

• AI infrastructure demand is in early stages, with significant long-term growth expected as enterprise use cases mature.

• Cloud adoption remains in early innings globally, with substantial on-prem workloads yet to migrate.

AI and cloud trends

• AI demand is nascent, with only a small fraction of enterprise workloads currently leveraging AI products.

• 10% of recent signings attributed to AI use cases, though actual transaction count is lower; most growth still driven by digital transformation and cloud.

• AI training demand is concentrated in the U.S., but global expansion is anticipated as sovereign AI initiatives gain traction.

• Sovereign cloud and AI projects are emerging in Europe, with France as a recent example, but most countries are still in early stages.

Power procurement and infrastructure

• Power constraints are a major challenge, with underinvestment in U.S. infrastructure and similar issues globally.

• Behind-the-meter solutions are becoming more relevant as interim measures, but the grid remains essential for resiliency and scale.

• Supply bottlenecks are driven by transmission, substation, and NIMBYism issues in major markets.

• Power constraints have led to higher pricing and improved IRRs due to supply-demand imbalance.