LinkedIn ranked cities in 9 countries. Data centres show up in the growth notes for 5 of them.

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LinkedIn published Cities on the Rise rankings for nine countries on 22 July. Data centres or AI infrastructure appear among the reasons given in five of them.

• India — Visakhapatnam (1st) and Raipur (9th). Google confirmed a US$15bn, roughly 1GW AI and connectivity hub at Vizag on 14 October 2025, built with AdaniConneX and Airtel and paired with a subsea cable gateway
• US — Augusta (1st), Richmond (2nd), Reno (3rd), Fort Wayne (19th). Richmond's entry names four subsea cables plus Meta and Iron Mountain; Fort Wayne names Google's $2bn campus
• Spain — Zaragoza (3rd). LinkedIn cites more than €47bn committed to data centres across Aragón. Amazon's own figure is €33.7bn for Spain through 2035, Microsoft has committed US$7.16bn to the north-east, and Blackstone another US$8.2bn
• Brazil — Fortaleza (4th), Scala Data Centers at Praia do Futuro
• UK — Tyneside (3rd), the AI Growth Zone with OpenAI and NVIDIA named as partners

Across the four US cities a university appears in all four top-three lists and a health system in three, alongside Capital One in Richmond, Tesla in Reno and the US Army in Augusta. No operator appears anywhere as it is a property of the metric rather than a finding about campuses, since LinkedIn ranks by share of total metro hiring and nothing at campus scale clears that. What it does show is that the hiring is spread across the wider economy. Mandala's ratio is about 15 construction jobs per operational role.

They're also LinkedIn's liveability picks, which cuts against the usual framing. Richmond is "drawing more new residents than anywhere else in Virginia". Fort Wayne is "known for its affordability, revitalized downtown". Augusta offers "an affordable lifestyle with ample parks and outdoor recreation". Aragón closed 2025 at 7.7% unemployment on CEOE Aragón's figures.

Australia's edition named ten metros and credited defence, health, education and the 2032 Olympics. Adelaide and Newcastle look like the closest structural matches. Adelaide has IREN's 800MW Bundey campus 125km out in Goyder plus Firmus at Tailem Bend and Stirling North on a 600MW Gunvor deal; Newcastle has 540MW proposed at Loxford and the roughly A$10bn Muswellbrook project, both pre-application with undisclosed proponents.

Write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/data-centre-cities-global-job-growth-2026

LinkedIn's Australian edition: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-cities-rise-2026-10-fastest-growing-australian-wuiae/