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US Megaprojects: Looking beyond the headline numbers

Megaprojects are reshaping the US investment landscape, with 148 projects announced between January 2025 and May 2026 accounting for more than half of all capital investment despite representing fewer than 2% of total projects. But not all of these multibillion-dollar pledges are likely to become reality.

August 05, 2026
By Jordan Fox

Megaproject Surge in the US

Megaprojects – those with a capital investment of over $1bn – have become a recurring feature in the US FDI and interstate landscape. According to fDi Markets, 148 megaprojects with a total capital investment of $718.4bn were announced in the US between January 2025 and May 2026. Of these megaprojects, approximately two-thirds were announced by US-based companies (interstate), with the remaining third coming from companies based outside the US (foreign). While megaproject announcements account for only 1.9 per cent of total projects in the US during that period, they represent over half the capital expenditure into the US, making them highly influential on the perception of investment performance.

An increase in megaprojects has coincided with US tariff threats, as both foreign and domestic companies look to expand US commitments amid higher duties and political pressure. While massive investments have become closely associated with the Trump administration, they also featured as a priority under the Biden administration. Programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act were designed to attract large capital expenditure into strategic industries such as semiconductors, clean energy, and electric vehicles (EV). For instance, Taiwan-based TSMC, one of the largest ongoing FDI projects in the US, began expanding its manufacturing footprint in Arizona under the CHIPS Act, with its announced investment commitments continuing to scale under the Trump administration, reaching $265bn as of July 2026.

Data centres, life sciences, and coal, oil and gas are the top three sectors attracting the majority of megaproject pledges in the US between January 2025 and May 2026.

Data centres make up over a third of US megaproject investment

Data centre developments attracted the largest concentration of megaprojects in the US from January 2025 to May 2026, representing 54 megaprojects with a total announced investment of $311.4bn. It accounted for more than a third of total megaprojects and 44 per cent of megaproject capital expenditure in the US, the largest shares of any sector.

As artificial intelligence workloads and cloud computing capacity continue to ramp up, a rise in megaprojects reflects the broader dominance of the ICT & Electronics cluster across global FDI, accounting for 40 per cent of all recorded global greenfield FDI projects in 2025.

Large-scale data centre investment has been dominated by US hyperscalers, with only ten of the 54 recorded megaprojects originating from companies outside the US. To put the scale of these investments into perspective, Visible Alpha estimates that Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle alone could deploy around $4tn in capital expenditure on data centre buildouts over the next five years.

Life sciences gather pace under tariff pressure

Life sciences – encompassing pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, healthcare, and medical devices – is another sector where both foreign and domestic companies have pledged huge capital investments to reaffirm commitments towards US operations. Between January 2025 and May 2026, 31 megaprojects were announced in the US, worth an estimated $90.4bn.

The pharmaceutical industry makes up the majority of these announcements, accounting for 19 megaprojects with a total investment of $63.6bn. Through tariff threats and efforts to reshape drug pricing, pressure to expand operations in the US has intensified under the Trump administration. In response, major pharmaceutical groups including Switzerland-based Novartis, UK-based AstraZeneca, and US-based Eli Lilly have announced significant US pledges.

The continued use of tariffs and the corresponding reaction of megaproject announcements suggest that the momentum behind these commitments is unlikely to slow down any time soon. As of July 2026, President Trump announced plans for an additional 100 per cent tariff on generic drugs from 2028.

Whether these announcements will transition into operational projects remains uncertain. A report conducted by CBRE in 2025 estimated that only 10 per cent of multi-year US investment commitments from large pharmaceutical companies were tied to detailed amounts and identified locations. It also estimated that around half of the announcements were related to previously disclosed investments, suggesting an overstatement of genuine new activity.

Energy investment shifts back to coal, oil and gas

Between January 2025 and May 2026, 22 megaprojects, worth an estimated $122.7bn, were announced in the coal, oil and gas sector. The industry has been a focal point in President Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” campaign as the administration continues to roll back previous commitments to renewable energy whilst amping up efforts to extract fossil fuels. The impact of this policy shift has led to the cancellation or delay of $83bn across hundreds of renewable energy projects in the US, according to BlueGreen Alliance. Some of these include mega investments from foreign investors, including France-based TotalEnergies and Denmark-based Ørsted.

Efforts to attract large investments in the energy cluster have instead shifted towards domestic coal, oil and gas activity. Florida-based NextEra Energy, for example, announced two natural gas facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania, representing an investment of $16bn and $17bn respectively. Nonetheless, the largest capital commitment came from SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japan-based SoftBank. In March 2026, the company pledged $33bn to develop the world’s largest natural gas power plant in Portsmouth, Ohio. Forming part of Japan's $550bn US investment pledge, agreed alongside a trade deal to cut US tariffs on Japanese imports to 15 per cent, the project underscores the role tariff negotiations play in securing large-scale pledges into the US from foreign companies.

The divergence between new fossil fuel announcements and falling levels of renewable energy projects highlights the importance of looking beyond capital expenditure headlines to assess the Trump administration’s success in attracting large sums of investment into the US.

Big pledges, bigger questions

Megaprojects, while accounting for a relatively small share of total FDI and interstate projects, have driven impressive US investment figures in 2025 and into 2026.

Data centre developments overwhelmingly lead this trend, making up over a third of all announced megaprojects in the US between January 2025 and May 2026. Life sciences have also attracted substantial capital as companies strengthen US supply chains amid tariff threats, while coal, oil, and gas have emerged as the third most concentrated sector for megaprojects, driven largely by domestic investors aligning with the Trump administration’s drift from renewable energy.

The split between foreign and domestic megaprojects also varies by sector. Data centres and coal, oil and gas have been driven largely by interstate activity, with foreign investors accounting for just 18.5 per cent and 13.6 per cent of megaprojects within their sectors respectively. By contrast, life sciences are more evenly balanced, with foreign companies responsible for around half of megaproject announcements in the sector.

Despite these differences, the overall trajectory is clear. Both the number and size of megaprojects have risen sharply in recent years, indicating that megaproject announcements in the US are likely to persist. In 2025, 105 megaprojects were announced with a combined capital investment of $501.3bn, compared with 69 megaprojects worth $239.6bn in 2024 and 50 megaprojects worth $142.9bn in 2023.

Yet, their growing presence raises questions regarding the proportion of announcements that will materialise into genuine activity. Large-scale projects often span longer timelines and are subject to changes in policy and financing, leaving companies struggling to meet pledges and incentive conditions. Signs of these risks are already emerging. For example, in May 2026, the State of North Carolina filed suit against Vietnam-based VinFast, an EV maker, for its alleged failure to meet commitments to build a $3bn EV factory after work had been abandoned for over a year.

The success of the megaproject surge will therefore depend not on the volume of capital expenditure but on how many of these projects will ultimately reach operational status.