Record $12B in New Subsea Cable Projects Announced for Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific Routes

Over 95% of international data traffic travels through submarine fibre optic cables laid on the ocean floor - not through satellites, as many assume. This critical infrastructure, often overlooked in discussions of data centre markets, is experiencing its largest investment wave in history, with over $12 billion in new cable projects announced in the first four months of 2026 alone. The surge is driven by a simple reality: as AI workloads grow exponentially, the pipes connecting continents must grow with them.

Google's newly announced "Topaz" cable system represents a $4.5 billion investment - the single largest submarine cable project ever undertaken by any company. The 16-fiber-pair route connects Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain, with branches to Marseille, France and Tel Aviv, Israel. At design capacity, Topaz will carry over 25 petabits per second - enough bandwidth to stream 5 billion simultaneous HD video feeds. The cable is expected to be operational by late 2028. Meta's "Meridian" project, a trans-Pacific system linking Hillsboro, Oregon to Tokyo, Japan and Singapore with 20 Pbps of design capacity, represents a $3.8 billion investment and will be one of the highest-capacity Pacific cables when it enters service in 2029. Microsoft has announced two additional cable projects totaling approximately $3 billion, connecting the US East Coast to Northern Europe and the US West Coast to Southeast Asia.

The strategic implications for the data centre market are profound. Submarine cable landing points - the physical locations where cables emerge from the ocean and connect to terrestrial networks - have become among the most valuable sites in the digital infrastructure ecosystem. A data centre located adjacent to a cable landing station offers the lowest possible latency for international traffic, making it the preferred location for content delivery networks, financial trading systems, and international cloud deployments.

Marseille, France has emerged as the world's most important cable landing hub with 16+ international submarine cables, more than any other city. This connectivity advantage has transformed Marseille from a secondary European data centre market into a strategic gateway between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Interxion (Digital Realty) and Jaguar Network have invested heavily in the city, and new entrants continue to be attracted by the cable density. Virginia Beach serves a similar function for trans-Atlantic traffic, and its data centre market has grown from near-zero to several hundred megawatts in the past five years, driven almost entirely by cable landing proximity.

The subsea cable boom is also reshaping emerging data centre markets. Mumbai's status as India's primary cable landing point is a key driver of its data centre growth. Perth, Australia has attracted investment from operators seeking to capitalise on new cables connecting Australia to Singapore and Southeast Asia. Singapore's role as the nexus of intra-Asian cable routes underpins its premium data centre market status despite severe land and power constraints. Even cities like Djibouti, Mombasa, and Lagos are seeing data centre investment driven by their positions on Africa-bound cable routes.

For data centre developers and investors, understanding the subsea cable map has become essential to site selection. A market's cable connectivity determines its addressable customer base: facilities near major cable landings can serve international traffic with minimal latency, while landlocked data centres are limited to domestic and regional workloads. This is why markets like Northern Virginia (close to Virginia Beach landings), London (multiple trans-Atlantic and European cables), and Singapore (Asia-Pacific cable hub) command premium pricing - their cable connectivity creates a network effect that amplifies the value of every megawatt of capacity.

The current wave of investment also reflects a shift in who is building and owning subsea cables. Historically, submarine cables were built by consortia of telecommunications carriers. Today, hyperscale cloud and content providers - particularly Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon - are funding the majority of new cable construction. Google alone owns or has significant stakes in over 20 submarine cable systems globally. This vertical integration from cloud services through to physical ocean floor infrastructure represents the most complete control over digital supply chains in the history of the internet.