Swedish construction group Skanska has signed a $1.2 billion contract to build four new data centres in the southeastern United States, the company announced on 20 August 2026. The deal, worth approximately SEK 11.2 billion, will be recorded in Skanska’s US order bookings for the third quarter of 2026 and represents a major addition to the region’s growing data centre infrastructure.
The project spans four buildings with a combined floor area of approximately 75,000 square metres, or roughly 808,000 square feet. Skanska’s scope covers shell construction along with the interior fit-out of technical spaces, support areas and office functions. This means the company is responsible for the concrete, steel, building envelope and finished interiors of the data halls and offices — not the IT equipment that will eventually operate inside them. Construction is set to begin in the third quarter of 2026, with expected completion in the third quarter of 2028, giving the project a two-year build window.
The client has not been named. Skanska identified the buyer only as an existing client, the same phrasing it has used in several recent US data centre construction announcements.
Skanska Signs $1.2 Billion US Data Centre Contract
At roughly $16,000 per square metre across 75,000 square metres of technical and support space, the contract reflects the scale of building work now flowing into data centre infrastructure across the US Southeast. The $1.2 billion award is the largest single data centre construction contract Skanska has publicly announced, and it arrives alongside a steady run of repeat work in the same region.
On 13 August 2026, Skanska signed a $238 million contract for a 22,000-square-metre, five-data-hall building in Virginia, the second building on that campus, with construction running from August 2026 to May 2028. In July 2026, it booked a $94 million initial contract for a 19,500-square-metre facility, also the second structure on an existing Virginia campus. Georgia has served as another anchor for the company, with a $75 million contract signed in April 2026 and a $255 million supplemental award in June 2026 for a 22,700-square-metre building with five data halls.
Four Facilities Expand Data Centre Infrastructure
The pattern emerging from these awards points to Skanska operating as a repeat builder on multi-building campuses for a small set of large buyers. Each campus is being expanded building by building as the client’s capacity requirements firm up. The economics Skanska is capturing sit firmly on the civil-works side of data centre development — the construction spend that flows regardless of which hardware vendor ultimately fills the racks inside.
It is worth noting the clear distinction between Skanska’s role and the broader technology stack. The company’s work covers the physical structures and their fit-out. Servers, networking gear and power systems beyond the building envelope fall outside Skanska’s contract scope. This separation is important context for understanding how data centre infrastructure projects are structured at this scale.
Project Supports AI and Cloud Capacity
Growing demand for AI infrastructure and cloud infrastructure is driving a wave of large-scale data centre construction across the United States, particularly in the Southeast. Projects of this size reflect the physical capacity that enterprises and technology providers need to support compute-intensive workloads. Skanska, with approximately 25,900 employees and group revenue of SEK 179 billion in 2025, is well positioned to deliver construction at this scale.
Construction on all four buildings begins in the third quarter of 2026. The contract value will be reflected in Skanska’s US order bookings for that quarter. Expected completion remains the third quarter of 2028. The project adds substantially to the data centre infrastructure taking shape across the southeastern US, where demand for new capacity continues to grow.