Data Centers in Washington

Washington – High Capacity Gateway for Trans-Pacific Data

Executive Summary

Washington is the premier destination for organizations requiring high-capacity infrastructure to serve the Pacific Northwest and Asian markets. Its massive concentration of carrier-neutral facilities and low-cost hydroelectric power provides a decisive advantage for AI and hyperscale workloads. Strategic subsea cable landings make this region a vital interconnection point for secure, low-latency global data transit.

Washington: At A Glance

Network & Connectivity Ecosystem

The regional network environment is defined by its role as a primary gateway to the Pacific Rim.

Carrier Density & Carrier Neutrality: Carrier count: over 60 – as of December 2025. The market supports approximately 60 to 65 carriers across its major facilities, providing deep fiber density and diverse routing for international traffic.

Direct Cloud On-Ramps: Over 5, enabling access to 12 cloud regions as of December 2025. Local facilities provide direct, private access to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud, ensuring low-latency connections for hybrid cloud environments.

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs): The Seattle Internet Exchange (SIX) serves as the primary peering point, ranking as one of the most active exchanges globally for reducing transit costs and improving performance.

Bare Metal: General availability is high for organizations needing dedicated compute without the overhead of virtualization. Reliable options are available from global providers such as Hivelocity and ColoCrossing.

Power Analysis

Power availability and pricing in Washington are major drivers for large-scale compute deployments.

Average Cost Of Power: Industrial electricity is priced at approximately $0.05/kWh, as of December 2025. This rate is among the most competitive in the United States, offering a clear operational cost advantage for power-hungry clusters and high-performance computing.

Power Grid Reliability: The grid is well-engineered with a heavy reliance on hydroelectric generation, which accounts for roughly 67% of the total mix. This renewable-heavy infrastructure provides stable, predictable power through multi-substation support in major data center corridors.

Market Access, Business & Tax Climate

Washington offers a stable business environment with specific financial benefits for high-density deployments.

Proximity To Key Business Districts: Data centers are concentrated near Seattle and Tukwila, providing immediate proximity to the aerospace, cloud computing, and retail giants headquartered in the region. This location allows for ultra-low latency for local enterprise applications and edge processing.

Regional Market Reach: Washington serves as the logical gateway to Alaska and the Canadian West. It also provides the shortest logical fiber path from the United States to major Asian financial markets, making it a critical site for trans-Pacific data transit.

Tax Advantage For Data Centers: The state provides significant sales and use tax exemptions for qualifying data center construction and equipment. These incentives lower the total cost of ownership for long-term infrastructure investments and server refreshes.

Natural Disaster Risk

While the business environment is stable, the regional risk profile is influenced by specific geological and environmental factors.

Risk Rubric: High (93.22) – as of December 2025. Seismic activity is the primary long-term concern for infrastructure planning in the Seattle-Tacoma corridor.

Main Hazards:

• Earthquake
• Wildfire
• Volcano
• Landslide
• Winter Weather

Modern facilities in the region are built to stringent seismic standards to mitigate potential disruptions. Wildfires and winter weather events are managed through resilient facility engineering and redundant cooling and power systems. Other risks such as drought and heat waves are noted as relatively moderate as of December 2025.