Depending on who you ask, the public backlash against data centers is either a messaging problem or a grassroots backlash against a nefarious encroachment on the way of life in communities across the country.
Whatever the cause of the pushback, it’s clear that the voice of the people is at least being heard by more people, including the banks that provide the financing for these multi-billion-dollar projects.
This week, an executive at Bank of America told Reuters that public backlash is a factor in the institution’s deciding whether to fund a data center project amid an unprecedented rise in both the dollars committed to such projects and the public backlash by citizens who don’t want them in their communities.
“I will primarily look for two things. One is the readiness of the project… the second aspect I look for is the credit quality of the project,” said Karen Fang, Bank of America’s global head of infrastructure and sustainable finance. “Readiness means all the permitting and approvals that are required, and the community support from the people who are going to live around it.”
While those instances may seem few and far between considering the explosion in data centers already built and the hundreds of billions of dollars in commitments to build more, the people saying “not in my backyard” have also experienced some wins as well.
AI data center opposition gets organized
If Bank of America is considering community support when choosing whether to finance an AI data center project or not, then the company is running into a growing number of finance opportunities that it will be passing on.
More than 500 counties or municipalities across the U.S. actively restrict or block new data centers from being built, according to a review by Heatmap. While there are more than 3,000 counties across the country, the rate of restrictions has increased in 2026.
The more than 500 counties counted by Heatmap include only those with the “most severe constraints,” including steep setback requirements, noise limits that make operations impossible, and outright bans on permit approvals.
Perhaps most concerning for AI evangelists who have been working to change public perception about the technology, the “overwhelming majority” of those restrictions have been enacted since the beginning of the year.
Related: AI data centers are facing growing political backlash, data shows
Nearly 190 have been passed since June 1, and the pace of moratoriums is accelerating, Peter Freed, a founding partner at the Near Horizon Group and the former director of energy strategy at Meta, told Heatmap.
So far this year, more than 50 planned data centers have already been canceled after facing pushback from locals, more than twice as many as were canceled in all of 2025.
Public scrutiny is leading to recalculations at JPMorgan about whether to proceed with financing.
“The amount of work that goes into putting a bank loan in place for one of these projects is significant,” Kevin Curtin, head of AI infrastructure investment banking at JPMorgan, also told Reuters.
“Putting the credit agreement in place is only the beginning,” Curtin continued. “Throughout construction, builders must continually demonstrate that the project remains in compliance with the financial covenants and monitoring requirements agreed with lenders before each drawdown.”
Amazon, Google, Microsoft cancel data centers over opposition
Companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle are known as AI hyperscalers due to the hundreds of billions they’ve committed to building out AI and AI infrastructure.
“The existence of OpenAI justified an era of mania and opulence,” AI critic Ed Zitron recently stated. “Hyperscalers, bereft of new hypergrowth ideas, were able to point at the fact that ChatGPT had ‘the fastest growing user base of all time‘ and the Microsoft ‘supercomputer’ that built it and tell their investors that if they didn’t invest, they’d be left behind, with Amazon, Meta, and Google announcing their own nebulous ‘supercomputers’ in 2023.”
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“This is the underlying greed that has driven this wasteful, reckless and destructive era — the belief that there will be another OpenAI and, as I’ve said, the chance to become the next OpenAI’s landlord,” Zitron said. “And like any great investment bubble, the more money that piled in, the greater the fear of missing out, the more dollars that can be justified in turn, and the more complex and deranged the mythology becomes.”
But even those hyperscalers, with their seemingly unlimited war chests, have run into opposition that has slowed their plans.
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have each canceled large-scale projects after seeing sustained pushback in Arizona, Wisconsin and Indiana, respectively, in the past year.
Residents are worried about data center energy use increasing their own energy bills, noise levels that disrupt their way of life, the environmental impact and security risks.
Heatmap noted that Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, referenced the changing attitudes about data centers during the company’s recent earnings call, describing the AI infrastructure building environment as “dynamic and uncertain.”
But ultimately, money talks, and despite Bank of America saying that it is being more scrutinizing, BofA is still one of the biggest U.S. lenders to AI-related companies.
It is one of the financial advisors to a developer that is building a $16 billion data center campus in Salin Township, Michigan, for Oracle. That project has faced local opposition, but Bank of America declined to comment on whether it was moving ahead with financing it.
Related: Corning’s AI data-center trade hits a guidance wall
