Querétaro, Mexico’s Data Center Hub, Draws Projects Felt North of the Border

In north-central Mexico, less than three hours’ drive from Mexico City, Querétaro is humming. Not only with cultural energy — the state’s eponymous city is known for its UNESCO-recognized old town, Baroque monuments and corn tortillas — but also from a burgeoning cluster of whirring data centers, which are rapidly solidifying Querétaro as Mexico’s data center hotbed.

“We’ve seen a high degree of investment coming into the state,” said John McWilliams, head of U.S. data center insights at Cushman & Wakefield. “There’s a number of large projects going up, but it’s quickly turning into a cloud region for Mexico. … [Querétaro] has the opportunity to position itself not necessarily just as a major player in Mexico, but within the hemisphere.”

Querétaro lays claim to roughly 72 percent of Mexico’s data center operating capacity, per a 2026 BloombergNEF report. Currently, Data Center Map, an international directory of data centers with publicly listed locations, counts 66 centers across Mexico — 24 of which are in Querétaro.

Among those ranks, you’ll find heavy-hitters such as Amazon AWS, ODATA and CloudHQ, whose $6 billion, six-building QRO footprint is positioned to become Mexico’s biggest data center campus. Then, there are the Mexico-specific providers, as well as Microsoft, which alone has three locations in Querétaro.

As these hubs for digital infrastructure spread south of the border, the U.S. data center industry is increasingly recognizing the opportunities available abroad. Mexico, and specifically Querétaro, has made a name for itself for reasons that boil down to benefits for those in charge: Mainly, data center development in Mexico adopts the same, streamlined strategy as that employed in the United States, while generally shying away from the less-than-favorable controversies and high labor costs that define the domestic data center discourse.

At the heart of this discourse is the growing prevalence of data centers, which are gaining momentum largely because of artificial intelligence-driven demand. It’s no secret that data centers are a big topic right now, and as demand accelerates across the globe, Mexico presents a relatively new and still-to-be-realized opportunity. 

For proof, compare the time frames. The first hyperscale data center in the United States materialized circa 2006 (Google in Oregon), while Mexico didn’t get its first data center until 2019 — the year Rodrigo Folgueras, a senior vice president at CBRE Mexico, pinpoints as the start of the country’s data center surge.

Within this framework of demand, Mexico’s geographical convenience and technical capabilities have proved ripe for data centers, as the country carries over the key operational elements — namely, the weather, connection ability and infrastructural backbone — that have allowed the United States’ data centers to succeed.

“[Mexico’s] proximity to the United States, strong connectivity corridors, expanding digital economy and strategic position within North America make it an attractive destination for investment,” André Rizzo, consultancy Turner & Townsend Latin America’s director of industrial, science and technology, said in an emailed statement. “We are seeing interest from both global and regional operators that view Mexico as a long-term growth market.’

Successful data center development hinges on access to power, telecommunications infrastructure, suitable land, permitting, specialized design expertise and an experienced delivery ecosystem, Rizzo added. These pillars hold true no matter if you’re in Mexico, the United States or another market.

Vamos, Querétaro, which has fiber routes that connect with the United States, established industrial parks and an existing infrastructural ecosystem, thereby ensuring better access to existing networks.

Granted, many networks exist within Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara, but Querétaro is in the middle of those nodes of network, said Hiram Rodriguez Garza, a data center practitioner at Cushman & Wakefield. Given the state’s location and connection abilities, it has desirable “latency,” the term for the time it takes for data to move through a network.

And, because Querétaro is outside but not far from Mexico City, it maintains access to the infrastructure, population and connectivity of the country’s economic center, while allowing for more physical space for large-scale development, said Turner & Townsend’s Rizzo, who likened the Mexico City-Querétaro data center dynamic to that between Brazil’s São Paolo and Campinas.

Then, there’s the matter of Querétaro’s weather, which, among other factors, has embroiled data centers at large in problems and controversy. Data centers generally require cool environments, maintained at consistently chilled temperatures for maximum functionality. Consequently, the buildings tend to consume immense amounts of energy, often guzzle local water sources and make noises that can be disruptive to neighboring residents.

You don’t have to be a data center expert or even in the industry to know that these reasons have generated a range of pushback, both worldwide and at the community level. Data Center Watch reports that opposition has resulted in $64 billion worth of data center projects in the United States being stopped or paused, while anti-data center sentiments have decorated neighborhood lawn signs and spurred regional protests.

“Around the world, data center markets are discussing topics such as energy infrastructure, permitting processes, taxation, water management and long-term sustainability,” said Rizzo.

Querétaro may be able to respond to at least a portion of that pushback, as the destination is in a mild, pleasant climate with ideally cool temperatures. That means data centers in Querétaro can operate with some degree of efficiency. 

“Querétaro has great weather for data centers because you don’t have to turn on the chillers 24 hours,” said Cushman & Wakefield’s Rodriguez. “In the morning, it’s fresh; in the night, it’s fresh.”

However, residents of the Querétaro area, particularly in smaller, surrounding pockets outside the central city, have spoken out against data centers, in particular citing their potential impact on the local water supply. Tech Policy Press reported that towns outside Querétaro’s center have faced drought even without water threats from emerging data centers, while local residents have expressed concerns over different facets of data centers’ community impact.

Although organizations dedicated to fighting data centers in Querétaro exist, responses have been largely positive from an economic development and investment perspective, said Rodriguez.

“What we’ve seen in Querétaro and kind of that general area is that it’s not necessarily a ‘stop data center’ movement that’s present there,” said C&W’s McWilliams. “It’s more of a ‘prove the benefits.’”

Among those benefits, McWilliams correlated data centers with an economic development tool — the centers create new jobs and lead to greater demand for industrial products, which trickles throughout the economy, he said. (Brookings Institution research, however, suggests that data centers’ benefits to the labor force may be less than what is touted by the data center industry.)

And neither their development nor operation requires a from-scratch approach from U.S. companies. “From the technical perspective, I would say that the fundamentals are essentially the same: the same standards, the same equipment, the same vendors,” said Rodriguez. Folgueras, McWilliams and Rizzo all echoed this sentiment of relative standardization.

Notably, many of the same operators and developers are establishing footprints in Mexico. So, as that same group of juggernauts, from cloud providers to telecommunication organizations, moves south, they’re upholding the same standards for both interior data operations and physical development.

Because Mexico’s data centers utilize the same vendors and equipment as those in the United States, it’s not necessarily cheaper to build a center abroad. Data centers generally have fixed costs for critical equipment and power distribution units, said McWilliams. The servers therefore won’t vary just because they’re in a new location.

A significant portion of data center development expenses, however, derives from labor, which in Mexico tends to be cheaper than in the United States. Gauging an exact cost for Mexico’s data center labor force is difficult, as each market comes with its own variables and few, if any, major firms have published concrete data on the subject of labor in Mexico. Cushman & Wakefield’s 2026 Data Center Development Cost Guide, for instance, focuses solely on the United States.

That report, however, highlights one pivotal facet to understanding data center developmental costs: Even within the United States, pricing varies considerably across American cities. Per the C&W findings, U.S. labor shortages are raising costs and extending project timelines, though construction costs differ significantly across the country. 

California’s Silicon Valley leads the charge in expenses, while places like Oklahoma City and Dallas come with lower price tags. More expensive markets have union labor forces that are more heavily deployed, said McWilliams.

Beyond the cost of labor, a data center’s expenses depend on a number of factors that make a direct comparison to the United States challenging. Rizzo highlighted the availability of infrastructure, equipment procurement, access to power, delivery strategy, financing conditions and both a project’s schedule requirements and scale among the combination of forces shaping a project’s cost and risk.

For now, Mexico’s data center ecosystem is still developing, said Rizzo, and while the industry has established traction in and around Querétaro, it’s a relatively young market compared to other locations.

“There is a shared responsibility among developers, operators, consultants, contractors, utilities, educational institutions and public authorities to continue investing in local capability, expanding the talent pool, and strengthening the supply chain,” Rizzo said. “Sustained collaboration across the sector will be critical to support the next phase of growth.”

Anna Staropoli can be reached at astaropoli@commercialobserver.com.