New factory orders data released Wednesday by the Census Bureau show the enormous scale of America’s AI infrastructure buildout, with manufacturing orders for computers, networking equipment, power generation, and cooling systems all surging at double-digit rates compared to a year ago.
The Census Bureau’s report on manufacturing orders for April showed headline factory orders up 4.8 percent from March — a figure dominated by a one-month surge in commercial aircraft orders. But running beneath the headline number, the year-over-year trend data reveal a coherent, sustained explosion in demand for precisely the goods needed to build, power, and cool AI data centers.
Nondefense communications equipment — the category covering high-speed networking gear, switches, routers, and the fiber optic interconnects that link server clusters inside data centers — posted orders 32.2 percent above the same period last year on a year-to-date basis. That is the largest year-over-year gain in the report and, on its own, amounts to more than $4 billion in additional orders compared to the first four months of 2025.
Computer and related products orders are running 22.3 percent above year-ago levels year-to-date, almost certainly reflecting surging server demand. The computers and electronic products category as a whole — which includes both the compute and networking layers — recorded $111.8 billion in orders through April 2026, compared to $99.4 billion in the same period of 2025, a gain of $12.5 billion or 12.6 percent. Orders for information technology are up 12.3 percent year-to-date compared with the four-month period a year earlier.
More broadly, orders for capital goods excluding aircraft and defense products—a proxy for business investment—declined one percent in April but are up 7.7 percent year-to-date.
Aluminum and nonferrous metals — used extensively in server chassis, heat sinks, and the high-current bus bars that distribute power inside data centers — are up 20.9 percent year-to-date.
The power and cooling infrastructure that AI data centers require is showing up just as clearly. Heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration equipment orders are 14.7 percent above last year’s pace through April. Turbines, generators, and power transmission equipment — critical for the backup generation and power management systems that keep data centers running — are up 10.2 percent year-to-date. Electrical equipment orders are running 9.6 percent above last year. Electronic components are up 7.5 percent.
Taken together, these numbers trace the full AI infrastructure stack — compute, networking, power generation, power distribution, and cooling — showing up simultaneously in hard manufacturing order data.
The monthly, seasonally adjusted figures in several of these categories were mixed or slightly negative in April — computers fell 2.5 percent month-over-month, turbines and generators slipped 2.7 percent, electronic components were essentially flat, and HVAC was unchanged. But monthly factory orders data are notoriously volatile. The year-to-date year-over-year comparison smooths that noise and reveals the underlying demand trend, which in every AI-adjacent category runs sharply above 2025 levels.
The scale and breadth of the AI infrastructure investment now visible in manufacturing data complicates the narrative that AI spending is a paper phenomenon confined to tech company earnings calls and stock market valuations. Orders for power equipment, cooling systems, and structural metals reflect capital being committed to physical facilities that employ U.S. workers.
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