Tennessee has 60 data centers, and more than a third of them are located in the greater Nashville area.
Nashville has 13 facilities operational or under construction within metro limits. Many of these data centers, which are physical buildings that manage massive amounts of digital data, are located in or near downtown and the Cumberland River.
Franklin, Brentwood, Berry Hill and Murfreesboro also collectively hold a handful, and Gallatin, a town just 30 miles northeast of Nashville, has seven data centers, primarily run by Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.
The area may soon even be considered a hub for data centers, which could lead topotential conflicts with neighborsover air quality, water use and electricity costs.
Courtesy Data Center Map The Nashville area had 27 data centers in November 2025, according to Data Center Map.
Nashville is adding new data centers
Nashville is considered an “emerging market” for data centers, according to the latest analysis by global real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield. Austin is also considered a new market, while places like Phoenix, Dallas and Atlanta ranked among the top “established” markets.
Power availability remains a top factor for data center developers, according to the firm, though some companies will build substations or use backup generators if unable to connect to the grid quickly.
While Nashville has not historically been considered a tech hub, that could soon change: The software giant Oracle is building its world headquarters on the East Bank of the Cumberland River. The company may soon begin construction on a potentially $2 billion, 75-acre development. Metro Council gave Oracle final approval for the project last month, four years after the company announced its plans for Nashville.
Data centers in the area could support some of the company’s operations.
One of the newest facilities will be located in the Trinity Hills neighborhood of East Nashville. RadiusDC is building a100,000-square-foot facility on 12 acres of landto “meet the growing demand of urban data center inventory,” the company said in a press release. The facility will require 18 megawatts of energy capacity and operate on a closed-loop cooling system that uses no water, according to Keith Klesner, the company’s vice president of development.
What are data centers?
Data centers house computing machines for storing, sharing and managing vast amounts of digital data. These facilities can also play a role in safeguarding data from cyber threats or helping with data redundancy or backups during hardware failures or weather disasters.
Data centers can also be, essentially, factories for artificial intelligence. Elon Musk’s xAI facility in Memphis, for example, is one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, designed for training and running its AI model Grok, the chatbot for X. The data center holds around 200,000 Nvidia GPUs and consumes an estimated 300 MW of power, nearly one-third the size of a traditional nuclear reactor.
These facilities use a lot of energy, 24 hours a day. Data centers typically buy from the local grid or use their own behind-the-meter supply, often while also housing multiple backup generators.
In Memphis, xAI initially used dozens of small gas turbines. The Southern Environmental Law Center has argued that the facility’s use of turbines violated the Clean Air Act. As of October, xAI was buying about 150 MW of power from the Tennessee Valley Authority and had about 12 turbines in use on site with the required air pollution controls.
In Gallatin, Meta set up an agreement with TVA and a third party to bring enough solar energy onto the grid to match its energy consumption of roughly 300 MW.
Courtesy Meta Meta’s data center campus in Gallatin is using up to 300 megawatts of electricity, which is enough energy to power about 200,000 homes.
Meta’s campus in Gallatin is the largest data center in the Nashville area. The company has at least six facilities on about 900 acres of land but will eventually have as many as12 data halls, according to DPR Construction, the general contractor for the project. The data center came online late last year.
Why do people dislike data centers?
Some data center projects have been met with local opposition over concerns of pollution, water use and the potential rise in electricity costs.
Data centers require abundant electricity, often sourced from utilities that rely on fossil fuels. In Tennessee, TVA is the primary electricity provider, and it generates close to half of its power through gas and coal burning, which causes significant and even deadly air pollution. Some companies like Meta, however, will set up contracts to ensure enough renewable energy is brought online to cover their equivalent power needs.
Facilities that produce their own power on site with fossil fuels can also worsen air quality locally. Some data centers in Texas have skirted federal pollution rules with extended use of diesel generators, which typically cause far higher levels of air pollution than other forms of behind-the-meter or backup power.
Data centers are also big water consumers. Currently, xAI buys water — as much as a million gallons per day or more — from Memphis, Light Gas and Water, which also provides water from the area’s underground aquifer to TVA for its nearby gas plant. The company is nowbuilding a water reuse plant on site to reduce aquifer usagefor the supercomputer and neighboring industries.
Electricity bills may be affected by data centers
Public opposition has been notable where data center expansion has been linked to higher electricity bills.Utilities may subsidize data centers by shifting the costs to residentsand other ratepayers, according to a March research paper by Harvard Electricity Law Initiative.
Some research suggests data centers have not been the largest culprit in areas with rising energy costs.Wildfires, storms, gas use and behind-the-meter solarwere common causes for cost spikes between 2019 and 2024, according to a study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.
In Tennessee, it is unclear how data centers may be impacting electricity bills. The state’s average retail electricity price was lower in 2024 than its average between 2019 and 2024, according to the study. This past year, an unusual factor played a role in rates: TVA was forced to buy more fuel in the form of methane gas and coal as it faced unplanned outages at all seven of its nuclear reactors, so fuel costs went up.
TVA increased rates by 9.75%between 2023 and 2024. Experts have said the rate change will help fund the utility’s large buildout ofnew gas plants, which will support data centers. TVA proposed another gas plant in Memphis two years ago, for example, with a power capacity of 200 MW — less than the energy needs of xAI. TVA proposed another gas plant last year in Brownsville, just an hour north of Memphis, that will produce 300 MW of power.
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