Coming off a record shattering 2018 year, data center leasing in 2019 was down but still very healthy with over 272 MW of absorption in the Top 10 US markets tracked by Newmark Knight Frank. Northern Virginia continues to be the record setting market, accounting for nearly 120 MW of new leasing. As expected, Northern California (40 MW) and Dallas/Ft. Worth (30 MW) also recorded strong leasing for the year. Atlanta and Phoenix both had noticeable changes in 2019 as well. Atlanta closed the year with over 19 MW leased in Q4, making it the fourth largest US market in 2019 with 24 MW of absorption compared to only 2 MW in 2018! Phoenix, however, did not get the anticipated pre-leasing at the larger development sites and went the opposite direction in 2019 with absorption totaling only 11.6 MW compared to 34.7 MW in 2018. Newmark Knight Frank is tracking several large requirements, as 2020 is projected to be another solid year of leasing led by many of the largest and second tier hyperscale players. We also expect “edge” requirements to dramatically increase demands in many major markets with the emergence of 5G, IoT, and AI technologies pushing content and data further and further towards the end users. For example, in 2019, Los Angeles was a noticeable winner of edge requirements with much of the 19.4 MW of new leasing falling into this niche edge category compared to only 3.2 MW of total absorption in 2018. With the proliferation of data and the expectations for near zero latency results, expect this trend to exponentially increase over the next few years.