AI data centers and renewable energy infrastructure could generate around $200 billion in commercial insurance premiums between now and 2030,
roughly 12% of global commercial property premiums,
a report from the Swiss Re Institute found. The report was released Saturday at the reinsurance industry's annual meeting in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
The report also argues that the AI industry's ability to cover the infrastructure buildout is limited not by the availability of capital but by insurability, with assets like hyperscale data centers testing the limits of what insurance underwriters can price.
Existing data centers tend to be clustered where abundant power and connectivity are already available, along with ample land and a supply of water for cooling systems. Texas and Virginia alone account for more than 40% of current and planned U.S. capacity, the report found, though the report does not mention how local and state politics factor into data center permit approvals.
Yet more than a quarter of U.S. capacity lies in areas that could see at least three days a year with large hail, and roughly 40% is located in "significant-to-very-high tornado-day zones."
The Swiss Re report warns of "accumulation:" Data centers tend to be built in clusters within roughly 20 miles of each other, the report found, and because each site is typically written under its own insurance program, a single insurer can end up holding far more exposure to one cluster than its books make obvious. A single storm or earthquake could then trigger claims across property, business interruption and liability lines at once.
Swiss Re chief underwriting officer for property and casualty reinsurance Gianfranco Lot said in a statement that the firm is "seeing the digital economy become a real economy." Lot said the buildout creates areas where significant risk is concentrated, and that safely and effectively deploying capacity will depend on understanding those areas and being compensated for the tail risk.
Outside the U.S., the report found that about 88% of Taiwan's semiconductor fabrication plants sit in seismic risk zones varying from "extreme" to "very extreme." Swiss Re said a major earthquake in certain areas would push losses into industries with no direct connection to chipmaking, given the widespread use and high value of Taiwan-produced chips.
The $200 billion premium projection appears in sigma 3/2026, a research series Swiss Re has published since the 1970s which is used by insurers for help with pricing decisions.
In other data center news, The Latent reported Saturday that Tata Consultancy Services plans a $7.4 billion, 1 GW campus in Hyderabad, and earlier wrote that Cipher Digital is turning to natural gas to unlock up to 2.5 GW for HPC data centers. PwC estimated last week that the U.S. could capture roughly half of a $31.6 trillion AI infrastructure buildout through 2050.