Mumbai/Bengaluru, Oct. 3 -- Hyperscalers and large companies are increasingly booking data centre capacity before facilities are ready, with pre-leased capacity more than doubling in a year as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure outpaces new supply. Pre-leased data centre capacity rose to around 1.2 gigawatts (GW) as of June 2026, from around 550 megawatts (MW) a year earlier, according to data published in a 23 August report by real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield. The capacity refers to the amount of computing infrastructure a data centre can support, measured by the power available to run IT equipment. Pre-leasing, or early booking of under-construction data centres, is an established practice worldwide. In India, for example, Adani Enterprises Ltd, one of the country's largest industrial conglomerates, has bet on 1GW of cumulative data centre capacity, anchored by hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google. The rush to secure capacity reflects the growing demand for AI and cloud infrastructure in India. Companies are committing earlier because data centres take time to build, with land, power connectivity, approvals and construction all adding to the time needed to bring new capacity online. "Supply of data centre capacity takes more time because large data centres require land, power connectivity, approvals and significant construction periods," said Vinish Bawa, a partner at consultancy PwC India. "This is encouraging customers to commit to capacity earlier rather than wait for facilities to become operational," he added. The rise in data centre utilization has made India "Asia's fastest-growing datacentre market, driven by hyperscale investments, AI workloads, and transformative tax incentives," according to a 31 August note by real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) India. The Indian government is offering a tax holiday until 2047 for foreign cloud service providers that use Indian datacentre infrastructure. India's datacentre capacity stood at 1.7GW as of June 2026, according to Cushman & Wakefield, and is expected to reach 5.6GW by 2030 at a 33% annualized growth rate. While pre-leased capacity has doubled, vacancies at operational datacentres have also fallen to very low levels, underscoring strong demand for existing capacity. Only 2.8% of the country's operational data centres remained vacant, according to Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) India....