Data centers (DCs) are facilities designed to efficiently and securely store and process large amounts of data. Data centers, which are growing in importance with the rise of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, form the core of the infrastructure that enables global digital transformation.
Modern data centers consist of mission-critical computing equipment such as servers, storage and networking equipment organized in racks, as well as specialized support infrastructure for power, cooling and security.
Data centers are the backbone of the digital economy, storing, managing and processing data around the world. The number of such centers per capita indicates the level of a country’s digital development.
Taking into account that as of January 1, 2025, the population of Moldova with permanent residence was about 2.38 million people, it turns out that we have one data center per 467 thousand people.
The USA ranks first in the world in the number of data centers (4165), which is almost 38% of all data centers in the world. This is due to the country’s developed technology sector, where major players such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft have extensive cloud infrastructure.
Companies like OpenAI are also driving the historic development of digital infrastructure to support AI workloads, with spending commitments of $1.4 trillion between now and 2035. It remains to be seen how sustainable this level of spending will prove to be.
The U.S. population is about 347.3 million people. They have one data center per 83,300 residents.
Europe has about 3,500 data centers, with the largest number in the UK (499), Germany (487) and France (321).
The EU’s regulatory focus on privacy, as expressed in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has also spurred the growth of local data centers, especially in Northern and Western Europe.
Of our neighbors, Romania has 65 data centers, or one per 291,000 inhabitants. Ukraine has 38 centers. Due to inaccurate population figures, that’s one center per 755,000-868,000 residents. In Russia, there are 180 centers or one per 812 thousand inhabitants.
That is, Moldova is significantly ahead of both Russia and Ukraine in terms of the number of data centers per capita, while lagging behind Romania by almost two times.
