Data centers are big business. Around 3,000 new data centers — huge buildings that house the computing power that props up the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) — are currently being built or planned across the U.S. Some speculate that global spending on data centers could hit $3 trillion by 2029.

Corporate interests — from energy firms and construction companies, to real estate businesses and utilities — are looking to cash in. But private equity — that powerful and opaque slice of Wall Street, run by mega-billionaire founders, focused on private investment and outsized profits — is an especially outsized force driving the data center boom, pouring billions into construction deals while also positioning itself to profit from supplying AI’s insatiable energy demands.

AI profiteers, however, have come up against a major obstacle: a growing, vibrant, locally rooted resistance movement, stretching across the U.S., against the data center boom.