At a glance
LinkedIn published Cities on the Rise rankings for nine countries on 22 July 2026, and named data centre or AI infrastructure investment as a growth driver in five of them.
It is the stated reason for the top-ranked city in both India and the United States.
The same entries describe those cities in liveability terms: Richmond is "drawing more new residents than anywhere else in Virginia", Fort Wayne is "known for its affordability, revitalized downtown", and Augusta offers "an affordable lifestyle with ample parks and outdoor recreation".
Hiring in those metros runs broadly, across hospitals, universities, electric power generation, real estate and insurance.
Adelaide and Newcastle are the closest Australian structural matches to the cities where LinkedIn named data centres.
LinkedIn named data centres in five of its nine country rankings
LinkedIn published Cities on the Rise lists for the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, India, Spain, Brazil, Germany, France and Italy on 22 July 2026, all produced by the same three data scientists against the same measures: year-on-year growth in hiring and job postings, and the change in the ratio of members moving into a metro against those leaving.
Edition | Cities where it is named | What LinkedIn cites |
|---|---|---|
India | Visakhapatnam (1), Raipur (9) | "Google's $15 billion AI hub, Reliance's ₹1.6 lakh crore data centre project"; "the country's first AI data centre park and a semiconductor plant" |
United States | Augusta (1), Richmond (2), Reno (3), Fort Wayne (19) | "four undersea fiber cables converging in the region and data center investment flowing in from companies like Meta and Iron Mountain"; "Google's $2 billion data center campus" |
Spain | Zaragoza (3) | "tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft have committed more than €47 billion to data centres in the province" |
Brazil | Fortaleza (4) | "billion-real investments in data centers, such as Scala Data Centers' hub at Praia do Futuro" |
United Kingdom | Tyneside (3) | "the UK's AI Growth Zone, underpinned by more than £30bn of investment, with OpenAI and NVIDIA among the industry partners" |
Source: LinkedIn News Cities on the Rise 2026 editions, 22 July 2026. Figures are LinkedIn's, quoted as published.
Data centre investment is the stated reason for the number one city in two countries, Augusta in the United States and Visakhapatnam in India. Zaragoza placed third in Spain, Tyneside third in the United Kingdom and Fortaleza fourth in Brazil.
LinkedIn ranks these cities on affordability and liveability
LinkedIn describes Augusta as drawing "international attention as host of the Masters Tournament" and offering "an affordable lifestyle with ample parks and outdoor recreation", on a median household income of US$55,485. Richmond has "a robust local economy and lower cost of living than many other East Coast metros", and is "drawing more new residents than anywhere else in Virginia". Reno is "attracting newcomers with its booming business landscape, tax advantages and proximity to Lake Tahoe's year-round outdoor recreation". Fort Wayne is "known for its affordability, revitalized downtown and proximity to big Midwest cities". Zaragoza sits in a region that closed 2025 with unemployment at 7.7 per cent, on figures from employers' body CEOE Aragón.
These are the metros LinkedIn selected as good places to move to and build a career, and they are the same metros it credits with attracting hyperscale capital. Visakhapatnam's entry describes the region as "a magnet for talent, real estate developers, and businesses". Tyneside's pairs the AI Growth Zone with a £150 million clean energy park "expected to create thousands of jobs".
Hiring in those metros runs across health, education and power
Augusta hires into Hospitals and Healthcare, Higher Education and Electric Power Generation, with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the US Army and Augusta University its largest employers. Richmond hires into Credit Intermediation, Hospitals and Healthcare and Higher Education, led by Capital One and Virginia Commonwealth University. Reno hires into Hospitals and Healthcare, Technology and Internet, and Real Estate. Fort Wayne, where LinkedIn cites Google's campus as "broadening that base", hires into Transportation Equipment Manufacturing, Hospitals and Healthcare and Insurance.
Data centres do not appear in those lists because LinkedIn ranks employers by share of total metro hiring, which in a city of half a million people is dominated by the standing institutions: a hospital network, a university, a state agency. A campus with several hundred permanent staff and a few thousand workers through construction does not clear that threshold on any measure of share, in any country. Mandala Partners puts the construction phase at about 15 jobs for every permanent operational role, and IREN's Australian campus at Bundey is costed at more than 500 construction roles and more than 200 ongoing, figures set out in the full employment data.
The capital concentrates on a campus and the hiring spreads through hospitals, universities, utilities and housing. That is the pattern the employment multipliers predict, appearing here in observed labour-market data. It is not proof of causation. Augusta has US Army Cyber Command, Reno has Tesla, and Zaragoza has a Stellantis and CATL battery gigafactory worth €4.1 billion and more than 3,000 direct jobs.
Zaragoza ranked third in Spain on capital committed across the province
The Amazon and Microsoft money LinkedIn cites was committed across the province of Aragón rather than inside the city, and LinkedIn credited the metro with it anyway. Visakhapatnam, a port city, took first place in India on an entry that leads with AI data centres and goes on to name campuses from Infosys, Cognizant and Accenture. Raipur, ninth, carries a data centre park and a semiconductor plant alongside solar projects and an urban infrastructure program.
Visakhapatnam ranked first and Raipur ninth on entries that lead with committed capital, before naming any of the employers doing the hiring.
Adelaide and Newcastle are Australia's closest structural matches
Australia's edition credits defence, health, education and the 2032 Olympics across its ten metros, consistent with a build still largely in construction and approvals. The city-by-city pipeline shows eight of the ten already carry capacity, tracked against the directory of Australian data centres and the roles open on the data centre jobs board.
Adelaide is the closest match to Zaragoza. IREN's 800MW Bundey campus sits about 125km outside the metro in the Regional Council of Goyder, and Firmus has campuses at Tailem Bend and Stirling North under a 600MW supply agreement with Gunvor. That is province-scale capital attached to a metro labour market, the same arrangement LinkedIn credited to Zaragoza. Adelaide carries a second industrial anchor in the AUKUS submarine program at Osborne, and South Australia has published a data centre strategy and proposed an Act.
Newcastle is a port city with an industrial base, a 540MW campus proposed at Loxford on the former Kurri Kurri smelter site, and a roughly A$10 billion battery and data centre proposal in the Upper Hunter. Adelaide is further along, because its capital is committed and its state policy is published, while both Hunter projects remain pre-application and neither has named its developer. The state-level position behind both sits in where Australia's data centre build stands, state by state.
What to watch
The 2027 Australian edition. LinkedIn's 2026 window closed in February, before nearly any Australian capacity energises. The next list is the first that could name a campus as the reason a metro ranked.
Whether Kurri Kurri names a developer. The Loxford proposal has lodged a scoping report through a planning consultant, and the end user has not been disclosed.
Bundey's 2028 energisation. IREN targets first power from 2028, with more than 500 construction roles and more than 200 ongoing on its own figures.
Aragón's next print. Zaragoza ranked third on capital that is committed but not yet operating. Whether its hiring holds as those campuses build is the next read on the pattern.