Cool Vector

From his vantage point advising 15,000 Oracle enterprise customers, Scott Charter sees AI being rapidly integrated into the operating systems of modern business. Speaking on the sidelines of the DCD New York event in March, Charter, Director of AI Strategy for North America at Oracle, tells Cool Vector how AI is reshaping everything from hiring and benefits management to quarterly financial closes — and believes the demand curve has no ceiling. "I remind you: today's AI is the worst AI you'll ever see,” Charter tells Cool Vector. “A month from now, two months from now, a year from now, it will be dramatically different. We are only anticipating where our new growth will come from. I look back to my customer base and I use a baseball metaphor — right now, most enterprises are not turning on true inferencing engines inside of their companies. We're not in the top of the first inning of that metaphorical ball game. We're all still looking for parking." Key takeaways from Scott Charter’s Cool Vector interview: • Oracle has rapidly scaled from traditional cloud infrastructure to AI factories, exemplified by expanding from 131,000 to 800,000 GPUs in a single cluster. • Corporate AI adoption is evolving from author-and-answer tools toward agentic workflows that can compress multi-week business processes into days. • Charter sees compute costs trending toward near-zero, which he expects to unlock an era of abundance where AI applications expand far beyond what cost-justification currently allows. Access the transcript and a searchable content archive at the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/ #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #ai #coolvector #oracle

A widening gap is developing between the data center industry's stated sustainability ambitions and the harsh operational reality of an AI-driven power grab, say four digital infrastructure veterans. This episode of Cool Vector includes commentary from Miranda Gardiner, Executive Director of the iMasons Climate Accord, Wannie Park, CEO of PADO (an LG Nova-backed company), Nabeel Mahmood, data center executive and Co-Founder of Nomad Futurist and Phillip Koblence, data center executive and Co-Founder of Nomad Futurist. The conversation is moderated by host David Snow. The challenge facing the digital infrastructure industry and its stated quest to become low-carbon is summed up by a sentiment Koblence says is being expressed behind closed doors: "Get me power now - I don't care how it's made." Gardiner's organization, iMasons Climate Accord, is a nonprofit industry initiative — born out of the Infrastructure Masons trade association — that brings together over a hundred digital infrastructure companies to collaborate on reducing Scope 3 emissions across materials, equipment, power, and increasingly water. PADO is a company born out of LG Nova that helps data centers more efficiently use power.  Among the key takeaways from this Cool Vector conversation: • The AI buildout has created such acute power demand that operators are quietly abandoning near-term sustainability commitments for natural gas bridge solutions. • Water sustainability in data centers is a growing concern. Water consumption driven by evaporative cooling is now triggering permit rejections and community opposition in water-stressed regions, and hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all disclosed that their water usage increased significantly during the AI scaling surge — in some cases reversing years of efficiency gains. • Inefficient data centers are "emissions machines." With average server utilization rates historically in the 10–20% range, the industry's fastest near-term sustainability lever may not be cleaner power at all, but doing far more with the power already being consumed — which is exactly the workload optimization and right-sizing agenda Nabeel Mahmood is pushing. • Community acceptance has become a hard constraint on data center development. The sector has spent years optimizing internal metrics like PUE and WUE while failing to build the public legitimacy it now needs to keep growing — and as local governments increasingly block permits over electricity bills, water fears, and skepticism about promised benefits, that communications gap is becoming a business risk. Access the transcript and a searchable content archive at the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/sustainability-in-data-centers-is #datacenter #sustainability #energy

Two recent MIT graduations have launched “the S&P 500 for compute” in order to allow digital infrastructure market participants to better hedge against price fluctuations.  Having graduated last year, Kush Bavaria, Co-Founder and CEO, and Wayne Nelms, Co-Founder and CTO, launched ORNN as an index fund for components necessary for compute fed into the infrastructure. Nelms spoke with Cool Vector on the sidelines of the DCD New York event in March.  “If compute costs drop too much, [vendors] go underwater,” Nelms told Cool Vector. “So they sell futures. And then enterprises, if compute costs rise too much, they pay a lot in cost. So they want to put a ceiling, so they buy futures.” Among the key takeaways from Nelms’ Cool Vector interview: • Compute is a financeable asset class. Ornn has built the first futures market for GPU compute — the Ornn Compute Index (OCPI), listed on Bloomberg — giving data center operators and enterprises a mechanism to hedge cost exposure the way commodity markets hedge oil or grain. • Residual value guarantees unlock better debt financing. By committing to buy back GPU hardware at a fixed percentage of cost after three years, Ornn gives lenders confidence that collateral won’t depreciate to zero, which directly lowers borrowing costs for data center operators. • The index is a leading indicator, not a lagging one. Ornn’s data reacts to supply chain shocks — export restrictions, wafer shortages, geopolitical news — before headlines break, making OCPI a meaningful alternative data source for hedge funds and asset managers. • Capacity constraints, not demand, are the binding limit on digital infrastructure growth. Every conversation Wayne has in the market returns to the same refrain: builders want to move now but can’t get power, land, or GPUs — and until that supply gap closes, the tailwind for the entire sector remains intact. Access the full transcript and an archive of searchable content on the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/mit-grads-build-s-and-p-500-but-for #datacenter #MIT #indexfunds

Suffice it to say that Richard Lukaj has been busy - the Co-Founder of digital-infrastructure focused investment bank Bank Street has advised on a torrent of transcations accross data centers and fiber networks, and says the deal pace and complexity is such that "most of 2026 is spoken for." Speaking at a Bank Street networking event in Honolulu, Hawaii, during PTC 2026, Lukaj shares with Cool Vector a number of market insights, including these key takeaways: Digital infrastructure laggards will be absorbed by stronger players: "There will be folks who drive into what is currently an enthusiastic arena and then find the category pivots in a way they didn't anticipate. Others may not succeed at all and will likely, in many cases, be absorbed by some of the more successful players." Real estate and retail capital are flooding into digital infrastructure, broadening the investor base beyond its private equity origins: "We're seeing much more active participation from the real estate community, as folks are thinking about data centers and parts of the fiber market as a good substitute for some of their commercial real estate allocations. And then one of the most interesting recent headlines is watching the role of the retail market coming into the infrastructure space." AI will drive meaningful differentiation among digital infrastructure services companies, separating those that integrate it from those that don't: "I think AI is going to become integrated into a number of the services companies in these categories in ways that are going to cause some real differentiation among the players." Access the transcript and a searchable content archive at Cool Vector Podcast: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/in-the-digital-infrastructure-deal #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #investmentbanking

Is a zero-emission, gigawatt data center possible? The CEO of EdgeCloudLink says yes, but only if developers are capable of substituting hydrogen for natural gas as a source of energy. Speaking on the sidelines of the DCD New York event in March, Bachar tells Cool Vector his company already runs a zero-emission data center in Mountain View, California. The success gave ECL and partners the ambition to aim for a gigawatt project in Texas. Bachar estimates pipeline hydrogen runs at roughly six to seven cents per kilowatt hour, on par with natural gas, making the economics more competitive than widely assumed. Key takeaways from Bachar’s interview: Modular data centers are the only way to keep pace with GPU generation cycles. “Whatever we design right now to be delivered in 2028 is going to be too late — that’s three generations of Nvidia in the process,” says Bachar. Hydrogen-powered data centers produce zero emissions and zero water waste by closing the loop between generation and cooling. Speed to deployment has completely eclipsed sustainability as the primary purchase driver. Says Bachar: “The king is time to token, and people are willing to compromise on sustainability.” A hydrogen-based gigawatt AI factory is achievable in three years from a committed customer. Access the transcript and a searchable content archive at the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/hydrogen-will-fuel-the-first-zero #coolvector #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure

Hyperscalers increasingly will realize they don’t need mega data centers, which, by the way,  are becoming targets in military conflicts, according to industry veteran Tony Grayson. As the former President of Compass Datacenters and then Northstar Enterprise and defense, Grayson has long been at the forefront of modular data centers that serve the edge compute needs of the digital infrastructure landscape.  On the sidelines of the 2026 PTC event in Honolulu, Grayson spoke with Cool Vector about a range of topics. As a former commander of a US Navy nuclear submarine, Grayson has strongly informed views on technology in mission-critical operations, nuclear energy in digital infrastructure, and the growing awareness of data centers as being vulnerable to armed conflict.  Among the key takeaways from this Cool Vector interview: • The data center industry’s declared capacity pipeline is largely fictional, built on LOIs, inflated announcements, and wishful timelines that serious capital allocators are only now beginning to challenge.“You can sell what you don’t have with software,” says Grayson. “It doesn’t work that way for infrastructure because there are real costs.” • The era of the mega data center as the default build thesis is running headlong into a hardware reality where rapid chip-set obsolescence can strand billions in capital before a single rack is powered on. Says Grayson: “The data center that takes you 12 to 24 months to build that you’re halfway through for Grace Blackwell is now not built for the latest chip set — and these are assets you haven’t even got yet that you spent a lot of capital on.” • The real money in digital infrastructure will be made not in training campuses but in distributed, latency-sensitive inference infrastructure — a build-out that demands an entirely different architecture, operating model, and geographic logic than what the market is currently chasing. “The use cases are there. The problem is the infrastructure’s not,” Grayson tells Cool Vector.  • The US military’s post-Ukraine pivot to distributed compute has made defense — historically a follower of enterprise infrastructure trends — the unexpected leading indicator for where the entire industry is headed: “You’re better off taking that one data center, put it in 10 different spots, and getting resiliency, backup, replication across those sites — or just make them harder to go after in the early stages of a conflict. That’s what Russia did with Ukraine.” Access the transcript and a searchable archive of primary-source market intelligence on the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/the-use-cases-are-there-the-infrastructure #digitalinfrastructure #datacenter #coolvector #navy #energy

When a self-proclaimed data center developer claims to have a gigawatt of power secured, the proper response in far too many cases is, "No, you don't," says Mark McComiskey, Founding Partner of AVAIO Digital. Speaking with Cool Vector on the sidelines of the PTC 2026 event in Honolulu, McComiskey gives an overview of the resource and talent advantages possessed by AVAIO, and explains how the electricity grid constraints in US are far more serious than many digital infrastructure market entrants yet acknowledge.  In the wide-ranging interview, McComiskey explains that, for many data centers, "behind-the-meter" is not net a viable power solution. He says he will be carefully observing the announcements of top hyperscalers for signs of strain in their balance sheets, as an existential struggle for digital infrastructure supremacy has prompted an unprecedented investment wave.  Key takeaways from this Cool Vector episode: • The power constraint is real, structural, and severely underestimated by the market. "There are very, very few places where you can legitimately deliver a gigawatt of power from the grid at any reasonable timeframe," McComiskey tells Cool Vector. "You'd be looking at more than 10 years from most sites." • AVAIO's early-mover positioning in the power queue has created a rare and defensible 2027 supply advantage at exactly the moment established players are sold out. Says McComiskey: "There is nothing available in 2027. Everybody is coming to us saying they've got a shortage in 2027 and need to fill it." • The entire AI infrastructure build-out hinges on whether the large language model companies can convert massive capital deployment into actual profits — and McComiskey is watching that closely as the sector's key risk signal. "The big four alone — Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon — spent $400 billion last year on CapEx. That's more than the entire global oil and gas industry, and that's just four companies." Watch the full episode on the Cool Vector Subdstack: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/in-data-center-development-real-access #datacenter #coolvector #digitalinfrastructure #power

The Cool Vector editorial team welcomes Ted Manvitz, Managing Director and Head of International Investments at Grain Management, for a wide ranging conversation about digital infrastructure investing in non-US markets, as well as Manvitz’s professional history of investing in asset around the world. Also gathered for the episode are Hadassa Lutz, a Partner at Cloud2Ground, Phillip Koblence, CEO of Critical Ventures and a Co-Founder of Nomad Futurist Foundation, Nabeel Mahmood, Co-Founder of Nomad Futurist, and David Snow, Host of Cool Vector. The discussion starts with an overview of Grain’s activities around the world, including in Germany and Southeast Asia. Manvitz shares his learnings from building up tower assets in emerging markets prior to joining Grain. The team also discusses the importance of establishing in-person relationships with regulators and government leaders in target markets.  Among the key takeaways of this episode: • Grain Management is systematically building international exposure — across Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and emerging markets where it has decades of operational history — on the thesis that the buildout of digital infrastructure outside the US is still in its earliest chapters, allowing for development-stage valuations and exit into an expected consolidation wave. • Power is the new gating factor for international data center investment, eclipsing connectivity as the primary site-selection criterion — and investors who can’t solve for it locally simply can’t play. • Manvitz argues his middle-market sweet spot of sub-50-megawatt deployments in tier-two cities is quietly emerging as a more defensible international strategy than chasing hyperscale gigawatt projects. • Some governments in Africa and South America are considering the embrace of nuclear energy as a way to leapfrog into the digital infrastructure market, because these markets have otherwise insufficient power options.  • In Southeast Asia, investors are betting that the region will replay the same consolidation arc the US and Europe already ran — with today’s small-platform entry points becoming tomorrow’s regional-scale exit opportunities. • Conflict in the Middle East hasn’t dimmed the region’s long-term appeal as a data center destination; if anything, it has reinforced the universal case for geographic redundancy.

Hunter Newby is making a big bet on internet exchange points in underserved mid-sized American cities. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, the founder of Newby Ventures says he predicts the same infrastructure model that proved highly profitable in tier-one markets over the past 25 years will generate recurring, high-margin returns in lower-tiered regions when they finally come online. Key takeaways from Cool Vector's interview with Newby on the sidelines of the 2026 Pacific Telecommunications Conference in Honolulu: • Tier-three cities represent the next frontier for neutral interconnection. While the rest of the market chases gigawatt-scale data centers, Newby is quietly building purpose-built meet-me rooms in the 125-plus mid-sized American cities that still lack a neutral interconnection facility and an internet exchange point. • The large data center boom is heading toward a reckoning and the "magical thinking" of newer market entrants will become evident. • Inference, not training, is what will drive the next wave of interconnection demand. As AI shifts from model training to real-time low-latency inference, the physical proximity of GPU clusters and the fiber connecting them becomes critical. Access the full transcript and a searchable archive of interviews on Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/p/bullish-on-interconnection-in-tier #ai #infrastructure #digitalinfrastructure #investing

The case for Spain as an emerging AI infrastructure hub is made by Gabriel Nebreda Molinero, CEO of Nostrum Group, on the sidelines of the 2026 Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu. Spain is uniquely positioned at the intersection of continents, Nebreda tells Cool Vector. The market has abundant renewable energy, extensive fiber coverage, and 30 submarine cables connecting it to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. With over 500 megawatts of projects breaking ground in 2026, Nostrum is betting on decentralized data centers that move away from Madrid and Barcelona and toward regions where the power is generated. Access the full transcript on the Cool Vector Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/coolvector/p/spain-is-at-a-crossroads-of-continents?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web #datacenter #spain

The largest data center projects have a huge debt advantage, as well as a potential exti disadvantage, says John Day, Chief Commercial Officer of CleanArc Data Centers. Speaking with Cool Vector on the sidelines of the 2026 Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu, Day shares front-line market intelligence about the debt “hiccup” in the digital infrastructure market favoring projects with investment-grade tenants. But Day wonders whether the largest data center projects will have trouble monetizing down the road.  Key takeaways from the interview: • Debt markets have tightened sharply for hyperscale construction financing, effectively freezing out non-investment-grade tenants despite robust underlying demand. • Power availability is the defining constraint shaping where and how fast data centers can be developed in 2026. • The same massive projects that attract large investors may ultimately be too big to exit cleanly. • CleanArc’s Tier 1 location strategy is a bet on proximity to fiber and peering exchanges #datacenter #coolvector #digitalinfrastructure

Data center batteries are no longer simply "backup insurance" for power disruptions, and are now a core part of digital infrastructure allowing efficient use of energy as well as unbroken uptime, say Brandon Smith, VP of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive and Nabeel Mahmood, a longtime data center operator and now the co-founder of Nomad Futurist Institute.  This episode of Cool Vector dives deep into advances in battery technology and the realities of power availability across the digital infrastructure landscape. Among the key takeaways: • AI's uniquely volatile power demand — with GPU clusters spiking to 180% of idle draw in milliseconds — has forced the industry to treat batteries as active performance assets rather than passive backup, fundamentally changing how they're specified and budgeted. • Lithium-ion's recycling challenges and finite mineral supply have created real openings for alternative chemistries like nickel zinc, and the broader R&D wave lithium triggered has made it commercially viable to revisit technologies that were previously too expensive to scale. • The zero-emission aspirations of the data center industry remain aspirational. While batteries are a genuine enabler of renewable integration, the sheer power demand of hyperscale AI campuses has effectively outpaced the available supply of wind and solar, pushing operators toward gas turbines and other non-grid sources that quietly undermine the industry's public sustainability commitments. • "All roads lead to China" in battery supply chains. China's lead in battery technology stems from a decade-plus head start in R&D investment, giving companies like CATL and BYD a supply chain grip that Western operators are only beginning to seriously work around. Watch the full episode at the Cool Vector Substack: coolvector.substack.com  #datacenter #digitalinfrastructure #batteries #power #energy #renewableenergy

When Mike Armstrong first joined GI Partners in 2014, digital infrastructure assets that went up for auction would attract maybe five bidders. Fast forward to today's heated market, and Armstrong says between 20 to 30 bidders compete for assets in a sale process. Armstrong, a Managing Director and Head of Technology and Science Investments,  tells Cool Vector there are positives to the increased competition, such as pricing validation. In the meantime, he says “you have to be sharp” in order to stand out from the many new entrants to the market. Key Takeaways: • Cap rates are the signal to watch: In a market flooded with new capital and product, where cap rates settle will reveal the ecosystem’s collective confidence in future growth. • AI’s full economic impact remains unknowable, but the next 12–24 months will be decisive in determining what it means for data center deployment and investment returns. • Competition has exploded — bid sheets that once had five names now carry 20 to 30 — making sharp conviction and proprietary relationships the only sustainable edge. Access the full library of Cool Vector primary-source market intelligence, including a searchable archive of transcripts, on the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/

Towers are the digital infrastructure that make modern connectivity possible. As demand for wireless connectivity surges, towers are becoming more valuable, while at the same time an increasing number of “gadgets” are being added to tower sites to serve the needs of proliferating digitally-enabled services. In this episode of Cool Vector, David Snow chatted with Omar Jaffrey, Founder and Managing Partner of Palistar; David Bacino, CEO of Symphony Towers; Yannis Macheras, CEO of Harmony Towers; and Andrej Danis, TMT Partner at AlixPartners to unpack why tower infrastructure is an increasingly relevant asset class and some of the most durable assets in digital infrastructure. Highlights from the discussion include: • Why communication towers function as highly defensible assets, with zoning and permitting creating natural barriers to entry that favor collocation over duplication; once built, adding a second or third tenant is far easier than approving a new tower next door. • How the tower business has shifted from carrier-owned “tower farms” to independent infrastructure providers, allowing mobile network operators to redirect capital toward network upgrades rather than steel in the ground. • Why scale matters: owning or operating thousands of sites dramatically improves operating efficiency and unlocks EBITDA growth that smaller portfolios simply can’t achieve. • How disciplined site selection determines whether a tower becomes a long-term cash-flow engine or a missed opportunity. • Why demand is expanding beyond the big mobile carriers, as new entrants like fixed wireless providers, connected vehicles, aviation connectivity, and IoT platforms increasingly rely on zoned communication sites. • How towers are becoming a core piece of long-duration infrastructure portfolios, valued for their durability, predictable cash flows, REIT-friendly structures, and resilience through economic cycles. As device counts grow from millions to tens of billions, towers remain the physical backbone of the wireless revolution. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #coolvector #towers #wirelessinfrastructure #digitalrealestate #connectivity #infrastructure

GPUs versus TPUs, depreciating GPUs and data centers that may never be built - Cool Vector experts take you inside the issues causing the most uncertainty in the global data center market. A year ago, TD Cowan's Michael Elias roiled the data center world when he reported Microsoft was pulling back from some of its projects. Today, a "winner take most" urgency continues to drive the market, but hyperscalers increasingly are aware that what is being built today may not be optimized for the compute needs of tomorrow. In "Inside the 'Winner Take Most' Hyperscaler Battle," Cool Vector's David Snow speaks with Elias, the Director of Equity Research for Communications Infrastructure at TD Cowen, Eli Scher, Managing Partner at United Integrity Advisors, and Phillip Koblence a Cool Vector editorial director, as well as COO of NYI, CEO of Critical Ventures, UIA and a co-founder of Nomad Futurist. Among the takeaways of this lively conversation: • Why Microsoft’s pullback was less a demand collapse than a pipeline triage. What initially appeared to be a hyperscaler retreat was in fact a selective pruning of under-deliverable projects, coinciding with workload redistribution toward partners such as Oracle and CoreWeave. “They went through and they culled the pipeline and removed the stuff that didn’t make sense," says Scher. • Why forecasted compute demand continues to be impossible to keep up with, and why some data center developers will get "a bit over their skiis" along the way, says Elias. • The entrance of "GPU on demand" players like CoreWeave is confusing some market observers as to the ultimate source of demand, causing some to wonder, "Who's workload is it anyway?" • Depreciation schedules of data center assets are central to business models, but no one knows the true life of new GPU chips. One problem, say our experts, is that GPUs are designed to run parallel workloads, but actual future workload needs may end up being more focused, making chips like Google's TPUs a more cost-effective solution.  • Why GPU deployment is pushing the "upper bounds" of data center infrastructure. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #coolvector #datacenter #microsoft #gpu #digitalinfrastructure

The future of the digital infrastructure asset class can be seen in the history of the real estate asset class, experts from PREA and Five Point Infrastructure tell Cool Vector.  A mountain of institutional capital is eyeing data centers, but investors - including US pension funds - can often spend years studying a new asset class before beginning to allocate to it. Real estate is a good example of this journey from a niche opportunity, deemed uninvestable by institutional capital, to an enormous, universally embraced, mature asset class.  Cool Vector spoke with two institutional investment experts to better understand the current view of data centers among institutional real estate investors, and what the future may hold for digital infrastructure in the institutional portfolio.  This fascinating conversation between Greg MacKinnon, Director of Research at Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) and Jeff Eaton, a Partner at Five Point Infrastructure, covers topics of interest to anyone seeking to better understand the increasing partnership between private capital and data centers. Among the key takeaways: • Institutional investors are just beginning the learning curve on data centers—just like they once did with real estate. Despite massive interest, pensions and endowments are still figuring out which allocation "bucket" data centers belong in, and how to underwrite them—a process similar to how real estate entered institutional allocations in the 1970s. “Everyone's learning about it, but it takes a while for an institutional investor to get to a point where they can actually sort of put capital to work," says MacKinnon.  • Institutional investors—especially public pensions—move slowly and cautiously when adopting a new category, but once it's approved, that category can rapidly grow to become a core portfolio component. "They have to go through a rigorous allocation process, which can take six months, a year, a year and a half, especially if you're a sovereign wealth fund or a public pension fund," says Eaton. • Greenfield data center projects offer high returns, but carry risk many investors are not yet equipped to manage. “That just causes an institutional investor to have to do even more work: Is it worth the extra three or 400 basis points for this extra risk that I'm taking?" asks Eaton. • Data center demand is creating new adjacent investment themes—especially around energy infrastructure. “Even if you've allocated to data centers before, there's going to be other opportunities for you to get decent returns by having derivative exposure to the data center asset class," says Eaton. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #coolvector #digitalinfrastructure #datacenter #datacenters #realestate #cre

Energy Capital Partners, among the most dominant energy players in the global data center market, now sees an upside potential to its many power-plant sites that did not exist during decades of zero-growth in the electricity markets, says Andrew Gilbert, a Partner at ECP.  Gilbert recently sat for an interview with Cool Vector, during which he described ECP's response the surging demand for energy out of the digital infrastructure and manufacturing spaces.  ECP has become a highly sought-after power-infrastructure partner for the data-center industry by financing and operating generation platforms that directly underpin hyperscale and cloud-campus build-outs. With more than $32 billion in committed capital since its 2005 founding, ECP's marquee partnerships include a $50 billion strategic alliance with KKR and a $25 billion joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s ADQ.  Among the key takeaways of the interview: • Tapping existing power supply remains far less expensive than building out new capacity. That said, ECP is now seeing opportunities to add capacity to existing power-plant sites, wheras in years prior its portfolio of assets was acquired at valuations well below replacement cost.  • The queues for power interconnection among data center developers are "overstated" because of the strategy of proliferating proposals to see which get approved first. • Solar power still has a "cost advantage." • Some institutional investors have seen such success with digital infrastructure investments that their portfolios have become over-allocated to the sub-asset class.  • The US has a natural-gas "constraint problem" that will hamper the build out of infrastructure necessary for what most market observers believe will be the most critical source of power for data centers going forward.

While at Google, where he led data center acquisitions across North America, Raj Vohra learned "we're just scratching the surface of what the world needs for compute capacity," says Vohra, now the head of data center investing for Thor Equities. "We'll see evolutions of different product types," Vorha tells Cool Vector in a wide-ranging interview. "There's going to be a lot of demand in a lot of different forms over the foreseeable future." Vorha speaks with Cool Vector's David Snow about what he learned at Google about data centers, and what Thor Equities' approach will be to the digital infrastructure opportunity. Among the topics discussed: Demand for compute continues to outpace supply. From his decade at Google, Vohra learned that demand for compute capacity is only accelerating, driven by both consumer and enterprise applications. The last few years have seen demand far exceed supply, creating urgency around quality sites with available power. “For 10 years now, there's been a supply demand mismatch, but I would say in the last couple years, that demand just blew past supply," he says. Thor Equities’ data center strategy targets growth markets. Thor, a $20 billion AUM investment firm best known for its track record in real estate, is not chasing the crowded, established hubs of Northern Virginia or Silicon Valley. Instead, its focus is on land acquisition and infrastructure development in “path of growth” markets that hyperscalers will need next. "We're focused on real estate infrastructure development for hyperscale data centers in what I would call next-up markets, in the path of growth for large hyperscale development users," Vohra says.  Industrial real estate expertise provides a competitive edge. Thor’s long track record in industrial real estate translates well into the infrastructure demands of data centers. Teams that know how to handle utilities, municipalities, and complex site development are able to bridge into data centers faster, even as specialists are still needed. “The data center acquisition and development space is ultimately an infrastructure game," Vohra says. 

Agentic AI is driving the use of modular data centers, according to Tony Grayson, former President of Compass Datacenters, and now President and General Manager of Northstar Federal and Northstar Enterprise & Defense, where he has innovated modular data centers designed to bring flexibility and efficiency to a market in which technology evolves faster than traditional large-scale data centers can keep up with. Grayson is a well-known leader within the data center world. In a lively conversation with his friends and industry sojourners Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood, Grayson talks about the frustrating history and bright future of modular data centers and the AI applications that are finally driving demand for smaller data centers that can fit in parking lots.  As the former Commanding Officer of a US Navy submarine, Grayson shares keen insights into mission-critical energy, having been responsible for, essentially, a "submerged nuclear reactor" in which even small mistakes can lead to fatalities. Among the key takeaways of Cool Vector's conversation with Tony Grayson: • Modular data centers are set to dominate deployment timelines. Grayson argues that modular deployments are becoming essential as compute demand from AI workloads outpaces hyperscale construction timelines. Instead of multi-year builds, modular units can be deployed in “three to six months,” making them critical for real-time AI inference such as fraud detection and language translation. “What modular data centers give you is a very, very quick time in the market at a very good cost on something that’s easily upgradeable,” says Grayson. • Distributed compute is replacing "bigger is better" economics. Scale for its own sake is no longer aligned with technology or economics. Customers want smaller, controllable AI environments—sometimes literally “in the parking lot”— rather than massive centralized builds. “It’s not a how big can you build? It’s how can you build a hundred thousand of these things just for one platform and place them all around the world?” says Grayson. • Nuclear power may lose admirers after overpromises. While nuclear power is again being floated as a solution for energy-hungry data centers, Grayson—drawing on his background as a submarine commander—warned of overpromising. He noted that advanced reactor projects face long regulatory and technical hurdles, predicting a backlash if expectations are not met. “I am worried that nuclear is gonna get a bad name when all these Gen 4s who promised delivery in a couple years never happen,” he says. • Decomposable infrastructure will displace GPUs. Grayson highighted the looming shift from GPU-dominated architectures to decomposable infrastructure and custom ASICs, which can outperform GPUs at lower cost. This evolution will fundamentally reshape facility design and economics over the next five years. “You are getting AI right now, which is agentic machine to machine stuff," says Grayson. "In a couple years, they’re gonna have decomposable infrastructure where basically you’re separating your CPU, your memory, your storage with optical, and then we’re gonna build a data center for that,” says Grayson • Europe enforces sustainability as U.S. lags behind. Sustainability remains a patchy priority, with European regulators pushing strict standards while U.S. operators often give it “lip service.” Time-to-market and ROI remain dominant drivers, even if climate goals are compromised. “I think Europe is super sustainable. In the US, it’s more lip service than anything else right now,” says Grayson. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/   Visit Tony Grayson's website: https://www.tonygraysonvet.com/

Two of the world's biggest digital infrastructure investors - EQT and DigitalBridge - are bullish about fiber networks, and tell Cool Vector why.   The long-term bet on fiber began in 2019, when EQT and DigitalBridge jointly took Zayo private in a $14 billion transaction. In March 2025, the group announced another wave of investment - Zayo's acquisition of Crown Castle's fiber solutions business for $4.25 billion, and EQT Active Core Infrastructure's acquisition of the Crown Castle small-cells business for $4.25 billion.   In a recent interview, Cool Vector's David Snow and Phillip Koblence caught up with  Arnav Mitra, Managing Director of EQT, Jonathan Friesel, Senior Managing Director of DigitalBridge, and Bill Long, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, of Zayo, to learn about the bright future of fiber optic networks.     "Connectivity is increasing, bandwidth needs are increasing," says Jonathan Friesel of DigitalBridge. "There was a study a bunch of years ago where they talked about the hierarchy of needs, and broadband connectivity came out ahead of water, which literally means that people would rather die than lose their broadband connection."   Among the key takeaways of this fascinating conversation:    AI is creating a step-function in bandwidth, giving fiber investors a “free option” on outsized growth. "The way that this deal came together was, it was a good asset at the right price with a gargantuan upside option value," says Bill Long of Zayo.    For hyperscalers and edge expansion, fiber has become as decisive as power in site selection and network strategy. "Fiber is certainly just as critical to the data center ecosystem as power is," says Arnav Mitra of EQT.    Zayo’s take-private unlocked the multi-year investments needed to integrate 47 acquisitions and deliver a single, coherent platform. "Being a private company, being able to make those long-term value creation bets, is a better instrument than waking up every quarter to have the public markets judging you," says Long.   Physics favors fiber for moving massive data volumes—making in-ground fiber a long-lived, compounding asset. "Being able to constrain a wave in a piece of fiber is always going to be several orders of magnitude more efficient for conveying large amounts of data relative to broadcasting it over an open medium like the air," says Long.   Clear signs of market froth include speculative builds and financing deals that effectively give away future monetization. "Anytime you're doing long-term IRUs of your assets, and you have no further opportunity to monetize them, that feels more like an asset sale or a capital infusion," says Mitra.   Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:    https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/

The moment its construction begins, a new data center becomes an old data center, given how fast technology and use-cases are evolving. Retrofitting an existing data center is the only way to save it from obsolescence. But retrofits are more difficult than you might imagine, a panel of experts tell Cool Vector. This episode of Cool Vector includes Bo Bond, Vice Chair of Cushman & Wakefield, Brian Jabeck, VP Business Development at Bennett & Pless, Phillip Koblence of NYI, Critical Ventures, UIA and Nomad Futurist, and Nabeel Mahmood an industry Top 10 Influencer, CXO and co-founder of Nomad Futurist.  Among the key takeaways of the conversation: • Data center retrofits will remain a moving target as technology advances. The types of workloads data centers must support are evolving too quickly for any one design to remain optimal for long. “The beauty is that technology and innovation, which drives our industry, will always cause change," says Cushman & Wakefield's Bond. "Can we take something that was built before, improve it so it serves something today or for the future, or does it cost more and save us more on time to be able to come out of the ground new? And I think that cycle’s always gonna turn." • The data-center retrofit queue is growing. Rising rack densities and global power shortages mean more operators are upgrading existing facilities to meet AI and high-performance computing needs. "There is a significant amount of data center and compute space that's available in the market space that needs to be retrofitted to meet the existing compute demands," says Mahmood.  • Even new data centers can become obsolete almost immediately. Technological shifts, such as liquid-to-chip cooling, are forcing operators to modify facilities that are only a year or two old. The decision between retrofitting and rebuilding often comes down to rapid tech obsolescence—not the building’s age. "You've got one- to two-year-old buildings that are drilling holes and making penetrations to run a bunch of liquid lines that they didn't plan on," says Jabeck. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:   http://www.linkedin.com/company/search-party-channel   About Cool Vector's editorial advisors: Phillip Koblence is a strategic executive and thought leader in the data center and interconnection space. He co-founded NYI in 1996 and has successfully evolved the company from a Web design and hosting provider to a facilitator of robust digital infrastructure and connectivity solutions with executional capabilities in key national and international markets. He also serves as CEO of Critical Ventures, and Managing Director at United Integrity Advisors, agencies that provide multi-disciplinary consulting services to a broad range of real estate and digital infrastructure firms. Phillip is Co-Founder of the non-profit Nomad Futurist Foundation and Podcast, designed to demystify the world of critical infrastructure and inspire younger generations to join the industry. Nabeel Mahmood is a globally recognized futurist, technology executive, and board member guiding innovation across the intersecting worlds of AI, quantum computing, data infrastructure and automation. With decades of experience shaping digital transformation strategies, Nabeel serves on multiple boards of publicly traded and privately held companies, where he influences decision-making at the highest levels. As the co-founder of the Nomad Futurist Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, he’s leading an international movement to democratize access to education and careers in digital infrastructure, particularly for underserved and underrepresented communities. A top 10 global influencer, Nabeel is known for his bold perspectives, thought leadership, and ability to connect complex technology trends to their real-world human and environmental impact. He delivers keynotes around the world that challenge industry norms and push for a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable future.

Despite its relatively small size, Ireland is a heavyweight among global data center hubs. But that advantaged position has been thrown into doubt amid political gridlock.  In this episode of Cool Vector, four Irish data center veterans explain why Ireland's continued leadership in data infrastructure will require close cooperation between government and industry, as well as awareness among the general public that, despite energy challenges, data management is among the nation's most important growth industries.  The fascinating conversation includes  Christopher Brown, Partner, Global Strategy Group KPMG in Ireland, Garry Connolly, Founder, Digital Infrastructure Ireland, Eugene Finn, Managing Director at CAPCON, and Gary Watson, Country Manager and Director, Keppel DC REIT in Ireland. Among the topics discussed in this fascinating, and sometimes funny, conversation: Ireland’s impressive legacy in data infrastructure is now under pressure. Ireland has spent 50 years building itself into a digital infrastructure powerhouse—but its success is now straining its outdated utilities and policymaking frameworks. “We arrived at 2025 with all the leading hyperscaler companies of today,” says Connolly. “We were built on data. The reason we fight is for the data. The centers are just the 'what.' The data is the 'why' for Ireland.” Irish government gridlock risks undermining economic opportunity. While the global demand for Irish-based compute remains strong, a lack of long-term infrastructure planning is pushing projects—and capital—elsewhere, and the country's policymakers are too often focused on short-term electoral victories. “Sometimes you feel that things have fallen on deaf ears,” says Watson. “A lot of investment is being driven out of Ireland right now to where it's easier to do business.” Irish digital infrastructure talent is everywhere in the world where there are data centers. Even if projects leave Ireland, Irish engineering, construction, and design expertise is now powering data center growth across Europe and beyond. “The Irish who have built Intel, built Digital Equipment Corporation, are not sitting around waiting for Ireland Inc. to get itself together," says Connolly. "And they're following these projects because they have the trust, they have the skills.” Ireland's real constraint Is grid process, not clean energy supply. Ireland has ample renewable energy potential, but limited grid storage and planning capabilities are blocking growth; the challenge is no longer generation, but regulation. “More renewable power without storage capabilities doesn't necessarily solve the problem,” says Brown. “Ireland has arguably gone into the realm of scaling renewable generation ahead of the grid's ability to meaningfully store it longer than a few seconds.” Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media #datacenters #digitalinfrastructure #ireland #privateequity #coolvector

The future of the data center industry is being shaped by a use-case pivot among crypto miners, as well as by energy innovations within the crypto industry that make compute more efficient, say two Macquarie Group analysts.  In an interview with Cool Vector, Macquarie senior equities analyst Paul Golding and Charles Yonts, Head of Sustainability Research for Asia at Macquarie, describe the recent evolution of major crypto mining players like CoreWeave, Galaxy Digital, Applied Digital and Core Scientific, and speak on the history of how these companies evolved into data center industry players.  The conversation is particularly relevant in light of the recently announced acquisition of Core Scientific by CoreWeave. Based in Asia, Yonts also describes the importance of the region’s supply chain and how the data center industry there is positioned to grow quickly, thanks in part to practices developed by crypto miners.  Other important trends discussed by Yonts and Golding:  Crypto’s shift to AI data infrastructure is driving a new phase of growth. Crypto mining firms are leveraging their existing power-intensive sites to serve high-performance computing (HPC) demand—especially AI workloads—which has revitalized gross margins and unlocked new business models. The crypto industry was a forerunner in renewable energy and grid flexibility. Bitcoin miners pioneered partnerships with remote and stranded renewable power sources and embraced demand response—offering a blueprint for energy-conscious data center expansion in the AI era. “Bitcoin mining data centers can partner with stranded power renewables that have not had an interconnect set up yet... and be an off-take partner to these relatively remote facilities generating power," says Golding. Latency-agnostic crypto operations enabled early adoption of remote clean energy. Because crypto workloads are less sensitive to latency than traditional cloud services, crypto companies have long located in rural, power-abundant regions—setting an early example for sustainable AI infrastructure,  if this latency can be overcome with advances in fiber and networking technology. “The lack of sensitivity to latency has enabled them to have access to very cheap renewables, which is absolutely crucial," says Yonts. In the new data center race, time to power is the ultimate advantage. As AI demand surges, developers and hyperscalers prioritize how fast energy can be delivered to a site—outpacing concerns over cost or carbon intensity—making speed the defining competitive edge. “Today, it's time to power, time to power, and time to power," Yonts adds. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/?viewAsMember=true Macquarie provided the following company disclosures as of July 17, 2025: Core Scientific (CORZ US) - Macquarie Group Limited together with its affiliates owns a net long of 0.5% or more of the equity securities of Core Scientific Inc. CoreWeave (CRWV US) - Macquarie managed or co-managed a public offering of securities of CoreWeave Inc in the past 12 months, for which it received compensation.

Power constraints in major European data center hubs is driving investment to second-tier markets like Berlin, Madrid and Manchester, says Zahl Limbuwala, Operating Partner at Germany-based investment firm DTCP.  In a Cool Vector interview, Limbuwala explains the evolved landscape for data center investing across Europe, and stresses that knowledge of individual market regulations is critical for success.  Among Limbuwala's key takeaways: • Europe's fragmented markets are driving investors toward tier-two data center locations. With tier-one hubs like Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin increasingly constrained by power distribution challenges and growing residential encroachment, DTCP sees opportunity in secondary cities such as Berlin, Madrid, and Manchester. "The emergence of Berlin is predominantly a way of getting access to power," says Limbuwala. • Large-scale campus developments offer long-term alignment with Europe's renewable energy transition. DTCP’s recently launched GreenScale investment platform  targets sites where massive data center campuses can integrate directly with renewable power sources, creating stable baseload demand while supporting national decarbonization goals. Limbuwala notes: "The larger data center campus developments - 200 megawatt plus and beyond - represent an opportunity to work with the grid providers, work with the renewable investors and developers, and really put together a cohesive proposition story." • DTCP focuses on scaling companies that have secured permits, land, and power, but need capital and expertise to expand. Rather than speculative builds, DTCP invests in businesses with early momentum that can benefit from the firm’s operational, regulatory, and financial capabilities across Europe. "We are looking for businesses that are established but have not yet scaled. we're looking for businesses led by a management team, at least a core management team that has a strong track record." Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/

CapitaLand is building four major data centers in India, taking advantage of what Managing Director Surajit Chatterjee describes as a huge population underserved by digital infrastructure, a supportive government and keen hyperscaler interest in the country.  In an interview with Cool Vector, Chatterjee details the thesis behind CapitaLand's data center strategy in India as well as the macro conditions he argues make the country a prime destination for digital infrastructure investment.  Among the key takeaways from the interview: • CapitaLand is pursuing a large-campus, hyperscaler-first strategy in India, leveraging its real estate and energy expertise, while opening doors for private equity partners in its next growth phase. CapitaLand is planning to introduce LP capital into future phases, offering global investors access to India’s rapidly scaling data center market. "It helps us to have the right mix from a capital pool perspective." • India’s data center market is at an inflection point, driven by hyperscalers seeking strategic capacity as the country’s digital economy accelerates. Global hyperscalers now account for the majority of India's data center demand, positioning the country as a critical growth market amid rising cloud, AI, and digital services penetration. "The hyperscalers have understood that for them to grow faster in the APAC, India becomes a very strategic location." • Government reforms—including state-level incentives—have streamlined project approvals, reducing timelines and risk for data center developers. India’s regulatory modernization has created a more predictable environment for investors, enabling faster land acquisition, licensing, and project execution. "The central government took an early strategic step, and they declared this asset class [to be] an infrastructure status, which enabled it to de-align itself from the IT policy of the country." • Institutional investors see India’s data center sector as a long-term infrastructure play, supported by government initiatives, improving power access, and predictable demand from hyperscalers. Chatterjee emphasized that India’s evolving regulatory and power frameworks, combined with long-term contracts, are giving global investors "comfort that if they look at India, the story is definitely very, very clear and visible for the next eight to 10 years." Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #datacenter #infrastructure #india #mumbai #investment

There is a greenfield development boom in the data center market, and the capital markets for digital infrastructure have rapidly evolved to keep up, drawing attention to risk factors of the many data centers already up and running, says the head of RBC Capital Market's influential data center advisory business. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Shivek Ratnasamy paints the picture of a "booming" but "nuanced" market offering different opportunities to investors across the risk-appetite spectrum. The most pronounced trend, says Ratnasamy, is the practice of securitizing pools of stabilized data center assets to free up capital for new developments - essentially "recycling" capital where fresh equity may prove too expensive.  Among the interview's key takeaways: Investors are 'ring-fencing' stabilized assets to unlock capital for growth: With equity markets expensive and platform sales less feasible, data center operators are monetizing stabilized assets through minority sales while retaining operational control. "Capital recycling" strategies allow them to plow proceeds into high-yield development projects without giving up the entire company. Development financing is evolving with creative structures like TopCo/DevCo: RBC and peers are seeing success financing projects where stabilized assets provide a borrowing base for new developments, blending cash flow stability with growth capital. Terms remain attractive for proven operators, with leverage up to 85% and spreads in the low-to-mid 200s over base rates. Elevated interest rates are reshaping return expectations and deal dynamics: Core infra investors now demand low double-digit returns, forcing sellers to bridge the gap with future lease repricing assumptions. While financing markets have adapted, investors are scrutinizing long-term rates and asset obsolescence more closely than ever. The securitization market for digital infrastructure is maturing fast: Once considered “esoteric,” ABS financing has become a mainstream tool for data center operators, providing leverage above 10x at compelling rates. Operators are increasingly securitizing not just hyperscale real estate, but also fiber assets and more complex colocation portfolios. GPU-as-a-Service is disrupting data center leasing economics: Companies like CoreWeave are driving explosive demand by leasing third-party capacity at unprecedented rates, forcing operators to choose between higher rents with greater credit risk or lower rates with investment-grade hyperscalers. This trade-off is reshaping tenant mixes and financing strategies. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/

How will the tariff imbroglio impact data center development in the US, which relies heavily on imported components? Cool Vector convened a panel of experts, including the CFO of a major data center company, to compare notes on supply chain disruptions, critical equipment and what happens to compute demand in economic downturns. This episode of Cool Vector Hot Takes features a lively conversation between John Wilson, CFO of ⁠Sabey Data Centers⁠, Philbert Shih, Founder of ⁠Structure Research⁠, Nabeel Mahmood of ⁠Nomad Futurist Foundation⁠, and Phillip Koblence of Critical Ventures and ⁠Nomad Futurist.⁠  Among the key takeaways of the data center supply chain conversation: • Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems and edge data centers (EDCs) are among the most critical components manufactured outside the US that are worrying data center operators. In addition, says says John Wilson of Sabey Data Centers, “If I think up and down the supply chain, it’s the transformers, it’s the GPUs and the CPUs that I would put right at the top of that criticality list." • The power grid could become the most worrisome bottleneck in the data center supply chain. “Electricity production, and the impact that has on our ability to service the demand, is incredibly complex,” says Wilson. • The global nature of the data center supply chain can create “cascading” delays from even small disruptions. “If the customer doesn’t have chips, doesn’t have servers, doesn’t have cables, they’re not going to be able to set up their infrastructure,” warned Philbert Shih of Structure Research. • Multi-tenant data centers may have greater pricing flexibility to pass along cost increases—compared to single-tenant hyperscale facilities — because they operate with shorter contract durations and serve a diversified customer base with varying margin sensitivities and renewal cycles, notes Phillip Koblence. • New data center development may accelerate outside of the US as operators hedge against geopolitical and supply chain volatility. “We’re seeing a massive boom in the Middle East, in Africa, in Australasia. We’ve got to understand that the days of just focusing on North America or Europe are gone,” says Nabeel Mahmood. • Even enormous budgets can’t override the need for planning, patience, and trusted vendors. Says Wilson:  ”This isn't stuff where, even if you're throwing multiple billions of dollars at it, you can solve in an instant,” says Wilson. “It takes time to recreate the supply chains. It takes time to reshore manufacturing, if that's really gonna be the long term solution. These aren't problems that are easily solved in a moment. It takes careful planning. It takes work to find alternatives, and it takes patience.” Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/

The private equity firm that created ⁠Digital Realty ⁠sees a "wealth of opportunities" in digital infrastructure, but avoids hyperscaler mega-projects, says Mark Prybutok, a Managing Director at ⁠GI Partners⁠ and Head of the Data Infrastructure strategy. In 2001, GI Partners made its very first investment as a firm in a portfolio of distressed data centers reeling from the dotcom crash. In 2004, that portfolio was listed publicy as Digital Realty, now the world's largest data-center REIT.  Today, GI Partners has $45 billion in assets under management, and oversees three strategies: private equity, real estate and digital infrastructure. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Prybutok shares his excitement about investing in a rapidly expanding market, but offers guidance to investors about nuanced differences between business models, locations and commercial strategies.  Prybutok also describes GI Partners' strategy in digital infrastructure as being more akin to private equity, with a focus on operating businesses, management teams and value-add strategies.  Among the key takeaways from the interview:  Digital infrastructure deserves a substantial allocation in the portfolio. As digital giants drive global economic growth, Prybutok argues digital infrastructure should potentially command a larger allocation in institutional portfolios than the modest levels seen today: “If you think about infrastructure as the physical underpinnings of the economy… why shouldn’t it be significantly higher than 20%, 25%?”  Success in digital infrastructure requires sector nuance. With growing competition from generalist investors, GI Partners differentiates itself through deep sectoral focus and an ability to identify winners in niche sub-markets: “We’re identifying businesses that we in particular think are going to be the winners within a sub-sector of a sub-sector.” Edge infrastructure is a bigger opportunity than centralized mega-infrastructure. While hyperscaler campuses get headlines, GI sees greater long-term opportunity in edge infrastructure tailored to mid-sized businesses and real-world IT needs: “There’s a massive opportunity, multiples larger in aggregate, than these massive concentrated AI training data centers, but located closer to those end use points.” Digital infrastructure should be tech-enhancing, not tech-exposed. GI Partners focuses on durable physical infrastructure, steering clear of reliance on rapidly evolving technologies that risk obsolescence: “You want to make sure you’re not getting stuck investing in a generation of technology that is then made obsolete by improvements that happen in the next generation.” AI and IoT are fueling an urgent need for more infrastructure. From video surveillance to industrial automation, AI’s real-world applications are just beginning, creating vast demand for data centers and networks: “We see real-world examples… where the number of people reviewing and responding to alerts is going down exponentially as the AI improves.” Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media⁠ #datacenters #digitalrealty #digitalinfrastructure #privateequity

The launch of a new data center 'pod' business is being met with surging customer demand, highlighting the need for edge digital infrastructure in remote areas, according to the leadership of Duos Edge AI.  In an extensive interview with Cool Vector,  Doug Recker, President of Duos Edge AI, and Adrian Goldfarb, CFO of parent company Duos Technologies Group, describe how edge data centers offer an affordable, scalable solution to bring low-latency connectivity to remote regions underserved by traditional infrastructure. “When we drop one of our pods, you’re right around a million dollars," says Recker. "So you can justify the expense and the revenue by deploying these, and the savings to the customer out there justifies the [co-location]." Other key takeaways from the Duos Edge AI interview on Cool Vector: Edge pods serve diverse and growing demand—from remote school districts to ranchers using drones and AI—accelerating a trend of localized cloud computing. “They’re now going to drones and AI to manage their cattle," says Recker, of cattle ranchers in remote parts of Texas. "Well, they can’t do all this data and AI without having compute on site.” Compared to traditional data centers that can take years to build, Duos Edge AI delivers a fully operational edge pod in less than four months. With revenue potential of up to $400,000 per year, and rapid deployment costs of around $1 million, edge pods deliver attractive ROI within four years. “The expected revenue from that is somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 per year, which means the return on it is anywhere between two and a half and four years," says Goldfarb. The explosion of data demand—especially in remote healthcare and education—has transformed edge data centers from speculative infrastructure to essential utility. "The need is there," says Recker. "We’re not trying to invent a product. Now we’re trying to fix a need, which is always better to be on that side.” Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media⁠

Interest in ETA careers is rising "exponentially" among MBA candidates at what is widely regarded as the intellectual birthplace of Entrepreneurship-Through-Acquisition, according to three leaders of the Stanford Graduate School of Business' ETA club. In a joint interview with Search Party, president Michelle Nguyen and vice presidents Ruby Au and Laura Kiehl share details of the club's mission to prepare students for the rigors of ETA search, in which post-MBA entrepreneurs, backed by investors, have two years to find and acquire a high-quality, lower-middle-market business, and, if successful, take the reins as CEO.  According to Au, ETA increasingly is viewed as a "risk-adjusted way to do a startup," appealing to ambitious operators who want ownership without starting from scratch. "If you really want to run something and have your own piece of something, then search fund starts to make a lot of sense," she says.  Nguyen, Au and Kiehl also share details of their own professional backgrounds and what led them to become ETA-curious.  Important takeaways from the conversation: ETA searchers are backed more like athletes choosing coaches than founders pitching VCs—fit and mentorship matter as much as capital.  While ETA offers autonomy and potential reward, its journey is uncertain and emotionally demanding, requiring grit, adaptability, and community support. "Search could be very lonely, could be very stressful. It takes determination as well as a very can-do attitude to go through the search process," says Nguyen. The Stanford ETA Club has become a hub for investor access and student exploration, offering a blend of networking, mentorship, and tailored coursework. "We are kind of like the orchestrator, trying to select based on experience, knowledge, know-how, and just kind of value to the students, but also to the investors," says Kiehl. Stanford GSB's faculty have published some of the most influential studies in the search fund space, including the Search Fund Primer and Search Fund Study, which have become essential reading for aspiring searchers and investors who back searchers. These materials helped define the model, demystify the process, and give institutional legitimacy to what was once a niche strategy. Follow Search Party on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/search-party-channel/⁠ #stanfordbusiness #stanford #mba #business #privateequity

How is it that Denmark, with a population of 6 million, has become a major nexus for sustainable data centers? Cool Vector convened a lively, in-depth conversation with CEOs from Digital Realty, atNorth and Danish Datacenter Industrien to learn the country's formula for public-private collaboration and digital infrastructure success.  Joining the conversation are Pernille Hoffmann, CEO of Digital Realty (Denmark & Nordics), Magnus Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth and Henrik Hansen, CEO of industry advocate Danish Datacenter Industrien.  Some key takeaways from the episode: Denmark’s proximity to major European markets and multiple subsea cables make it an ideal hub for digital infrastructure. “Denmark is the region that has the closest proximity to central Europe, and is only a few milliseconds from London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris," says Kristinsson. Denmark is pushing toward 100% renewable energy, including green biogas and innovative backup solutions, positioning its data centers at the forefront of sustainability. “Adding to wind and solar, we're also very big on green biogas. And this means that in our gas pipeline, close to 50% is actually green biogas. And by 2030, we expect to be close to 100%," says Hansen. Danish enterprises expect their data center providers to deliver 100% renewable energy, making sustainability a competitive requirement. “The Danish enterprises' awareness around sustainability—it's a significant criteria in their decision-making process. It's not just an ask, it's kind of a demand that we supply 100% renewable energy in our data centers," says Hoffmann. The presence of major hyperscalers has accelerated Denmark’s data center market, attracting global investment and creating a skilled workforce. As Hansen explains, “Ten years ago, we didn't have any data center capacity. The hyperscalers have accelerated the development because of the size of the investments they have made, and also because all of them basically decided to build in Denmark. It was a good signal to the surrounding world that this is an attractive market." Denmark fosters digital infrastructure growth not through tax incentives, but by integrating industry into the country’s ambitious sustainability goals. Says Hansen: "The incentive is more really becoming part of this ambitious goal that we have for Denmark in general—about very ambitious emission targets, climate targets by 2030, reducing by 70%, which is above the normal targets in other countries and in the EU. We try to lift the bar of what is achievable." Denmark is the site of pioneering circular energy use, with data center waste heat being repurposed for homes and novel projects like year-round tomato farming. "We have a contract with a company called WA3RM that is planning to reuse waste heat from the site to grow tomatoes. Not only does the heat not go wasted, but it reduces the carbon footprint of tomatoes grown in Denmark, since most of them are imported from more southern parts of Europe," says Krisinsson. Denmark’s approach to sustainable digital infrastructure relies on collaboration, innovation, and ambitious climate targets—offering a model for other countries. “You have to bring a lot of different parties into the same room and decide on a strategy. You have to bring in various knowledge from different sectors because these things are going so fast now. We need other types of partnerships, other types of regulations, if we are going to do this AI and digital journey without killing our climate," says Hansen.

Data center investment strategies that focus on ground-up development in unconventional locations are more complex, and therefore more likely to generate stronger returns, says Mark McComiskey, a partner at AVAIO Capital. In an extensive conversation with Cool Vector, McComiskey explains that many private capital firms active in digital infrastructure invest in existing assets, or compete for sites in overheated hubs like Northern Virginia. By contrast, AVAIO is simultaneously developing six sites in less competitive markets, positioning itself as data center provider of choice to large customers. “The best returns come from building infrastructure where it doesn’t already exist,” McComiskey says. “We’re taking on complexity—power procurement, entitlement, permitting—but that’s where the opportunity lies.” AVAIO’s approach involves incremental risk management—deploying capital only as sites pass key milestones. This method ensures projects are fully de-risked before significant investment, reducing exposure to cost overruns or regulatory hurdles, he says.  At present, AVAIO is bringing to market a diverse portfolio of sites. “Instead of pitching one-off locations, we’re offering AI-focused campuses, cloud deployments, and hyperscaler-ready sites across North America and Europe,” says McComiskey. For decades, data centers have clustered in a handful of hubs in the US, but AVAIO anticipated grid congestion, and decided to look elsewhere. “In Santa Clara, new power access could take a decade,” McComiskey says. “We secured 100 megawatts of power just 30 minutes outside the city—that’s the kind of forward-thinking strategy this market demands.” The continued high demand for data center capacity is influencing negotiating dynamics between providers and customers. Customers in need of cloud and AI compute are willing to pay premiums for sites that can deliver in the next 24 to 36 months. “If you can build in 2025 or 2026, you have leverage,” says McComiskey. “If you’re offering capacity in 2030, the power shifts back to the customer.” With billions pouring into AI-driven infrastructure, some market observers worry the sector is overheating. McComiskey acknowledges signs of speculation—like developers stockpiling electrical components without confirmed projects—but argues that irrational exuberance is still under control. “No one’s building speculative capacity without customers lined up,” he says. “Unlike real estate bubbles, where demand can disappear overnight, AI and cloud computing growth isn’t slowing down anytime soon.” Follow Cool Vector on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4nsZ5LKkE5sBSb04tAf94P?si=f047c3d6b664458e  Visit the Cool Vector website: https://coolvectormedia.com

This episode of Cool Vector Hot Takes tackles four hot topics in the global digital infrastructure market: 1) Has Microsoft been oversupplied data centers? 2) Inside the plan for Southeast Asia’s largest data center 3) Real estate investor love for data centers keeps rising 4) Blackstone’s low-carbon power move in Virginia’s data center alley. This round, the Cool Vector editorial team of David Snow, Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood is joined by Obinna Isiadinso, Global Sector Lead for Data Centers at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a division of the World Bank.  In a lively exchange, our CVHT panelists respond to a recent report from TD Cowen that Microsoft has cancelled data center leases in the US worth two hundred megawatts, and that the company is reallocating international data center investment back to the US. Koblence, Mahmood and Isiadinso agree that despite some scaling back, Microsoft remains committed to significant infrastructure investment, signaling confidence in long-term demand. They also touch on how hyperscalers must adjust their very large plans in real time, and why these shifts should be seen as strategic recalibrations rather than signs of evaporating demand. The discussion turns to the rapid expansion of digital infrastructure in Southeast Asia, with a $900 million investment in a Johor, Malaysia, data center mega-project led by Yondr Group. The deal includes significant financing from Isiadinso’s IFC. He explains the importance of the pre-contract financing provided to Yondr, and the panel discusses the compelling demand profile of Southeast Asia, still in the very early stages of building out digital infrastructure sufficient to meet an expected explosion in regional growth. The conversation then shifts to the growing interest in data centers from real estate investors. A recent KPMG survey reveals 40% of investors now see data centers as the most attractive asset class, up from 27% last year. The experts discuss what’s driving this rising enthusiasm, how data centers straddle the asset classes of real estate and infrastructure, and how these assets increasingly are seen as long-term and recession-resistant. Finally, the panel examines Blackstone’s $1 billion investment in a hydrogen-ready power plant in Northern Virginia, the “Data Center Alley” that processes roughly one fourth of America’s compute. Blackstone, they agree, is being very strategic positioning itself as a provider of low-carbon energy to the most important data center hub in the world. The experts note that Blackstone now has key investments across the data center value chain, in energy, construction and data centers themselves.   Watch the full episode on Cool Vector’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CoolVector Nomad Futurist Website: ⁠https://nomadfuturist.org/⁠ Visit Cool Vector Media's Website:⁠ https://coolvectormedia.com/

Infranity's ambitions to become a global player in the infrastructure debt market have advanced with the establishment of a US office. Cool Vector caught up with two Infranity partners to learn about the sustainable lending opportunity in North America, the risk-reward profile of co-location data centers and the limits of the energy transition.  Infranity, based in Paris, launched seven years ago in partnership with Italian insurer and asset manager Generali. The firm has a mandate to lend to the expanding infrastructure market in a way that supports sutainability goals, says Sacha Kamp, Investment Managing Director and Head of Investment Debt. Infranity's backers want to see their capital "creating positive change." Paul Colatrella, Managing Director and Head of North American Debt, explains that while the focus on sustainability is more pronounced among European investors, his recent meetings with North American investors reveal a "material segment in the US and Canada" that integrate sustainability goals into overall investment objectives.  In the interview, Colatrella and Kamp also discuss the firm's digital infrastructure deal flow, led by co-location data center opportunities, fiber, and small-cell investments. The firm is seeing good opportunities in tier two and tier three markets in North America. Infranity is focused on co-location opportunities in part because these assets have more diversified customer bases, and their more complex business models require more careful due diligence. Infranity looks to invest between $100 million and $200 million per transaction.  While not every emerging low-carbon power technology has led to a viable business model, Colatrella and Kamp say the rising demand for power is producing lending opportunities across the energy transition landscape. "The massive scale of not just building the data centers but the energy need behind them is I think something that might shock really shock a lot of Americans," notes Colatrella. "We're talking about replacing and expanding a very large percentage of our electrical grid if we're going to achieve the AI targets and the quantum computing targets." Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/o3m9WcoetVM Visit the Cool Vector Media website: https://coolvectormedia.com/

A shortage of construction workers with skills specific to data centers is hindering the growth of digital infrastructure, says Amazon Web Service's former Worldwide Head of Engineering, Construction and Real Estate. In a wide-ranging Cool Vector interview, Sandra Benson, now Vice President of Industry Transformation at Procore Technologies, says of the global race to construct data centers: “ We literally can't build fast enough. The biggest reason we can't is we don't have the labor to build fast enough. And even if we had the bodies, there's also skill development” necessary.  The proliferation of data center projects around the world has contributed to the demand for skilled labor, which has led to a rise in compensation. “You can go to a trade school, come out and the kind of salary in general that you can command now versus even five or 10 years ago is exponentially different,” says Benson.  In her Cool Vector interview, Benson discusses her professional background as a woman in a male-dominated industry, as well as the public relations issue faced by construction. “ I think it’s a great industry, but we have a perception problem,” says Benson. “I've said this for almost 30 years. People think of construction as very backwards, right? That it’s not very digital. And that is absolutely not true.” Benson also shares insights into skills necessary for success in data center construction, including installation skills as well as contracting projects with full commissioning, meaning the mandate to make the many components of a data center site work together, although these may be overseen by different contractors.  Benson also discusses the challenge of integrating sustainability goals into data center construction projects in the midst of a labor shortage, as well as the sense of excitement among construction executives for their growing backlogs of projects.

In his 35 years in the power business, ⁠EnCap Investment⁠'s James Hughes has never seen a market as "strange" as the current one, driven by data center inelastic demand as well as industrial projects across the US.  Hughes is a Managing Partner and head of the EnCap's energy transition business, which last May raised a $1.5 billion fund to invest in power, low-carbon fuels and carbon management. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Hughes says hyperscaler demand for data centers has created an attractive supply-demand dynamic for his strategy. "I've never seen a large class of customer, a large set of demand, that is price inelastic," he says.  Hughes predicts a five- to seven-year window during which he is confident "we will be able to take capital and earn a return that is a premium return on that capital." Hughes shares his analysis of the the "Republican trifecta" in Washington and its likely impact on his strategy. While the removal of incentives for low-carbon fuels and carbon management companies may challenge those business models, Hughes says any changes to the Biden-administration Inflation Reduction Act will have little impact EnCap's opportunities in power generation.  "If I can execute a power project, there is somebody that's going to buy that power under a long term fixed price agreement," says Hughes. "The challenge is not identifying a customer for the power. The challenge is, okay, can I find a site and get control of that site? Can I gain access to the grid?" Formed in 1988, EnCap is one of the largest energy-focused private equity firms in the world. Hughes says his team has the experience to recognize opportunities in a rapidly changing market. "What we bring to the table is gray hair, and having done this for a very long time and having lived through several cycles," he says.  Hughes shares is views on the prospects for renewable energy in digital infrastructure, noting the huge interest in using "clean, green" power, offset by an urgency to get projects built using whatever energy sources are available, led by oil and gas.  He gives his take on an oft-repeated question in today's digital infrastructure and energy market: Are we in a bubble? Hughes predicts efficiencies in the next generation of GPUs, but says he doesn't see any trend that will reverse excess power demand in the coming years. Watch Cool Vector on Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4nsZ5LKkE5sBSb04tAf94P?si=f047c3d6b664458e ⁠ Visit the Cool Vector website: ⁠https://coolvectormedia.com

The NEW Episode of Cool Vector delves into the sudden rise of DeepSeek, NVIDIA’s share swoon, the implications of overbuilding in the data center space, Stargate’s shock-and-awe, $500 billion digital infra announcement, tough sledding in the private capital markets, and why Phil, Nabeel and David enjoy the topic of data centers so much.    In “Cool Vector Hot Takes,” Phillip Koblence, Nabeel Mahmood, and David Snow engage in a lively, irreverent conversation, drawing on decades of experience in the data center and private capital industries.   Regarding DeepSeek’s more-with-less breakthrough, Koblence says, “ My initial take was, wow, that was quick. The overarching demand that's been generated in the super, mega, hyperscale data center space has been a little overhyped. You might not need 100 or 300 KW in a single rack in order to achieve some of these things.”   Mahmood adds: “We’ve been talking about it for a long time. People have been talking about the overdesign in the data center and compute space, and the underutilization.”   Despite evidence of potential overbuilding in the data center space, Mahmood and Koblence agree all that compute will eventually be utilized. Demand may increase even quicker, says Mahmood, referencing the Javons Paradox, by which technology made faster, cheaper and easier prompts a surge in usage.    The three discussed Stargate’s impressive consortium of backers, including SoftBank, Oracle and Microsoft, and their decision to highlight the dollar amount of the digital infrastructure mega-project over other metrics.    The talk turns to dynamics in the private capital market, which, Snow explains, is suffering from a dearth of cash distributions, restricting, for now, the amount of capital raised earmarked for digital infrastructure.    Finally, the three editorial advisors to Cool Vector discuss what they find so intellectually fascinating about the data center industry.   Cool Vector Website: coolvectormedia.com Nomad Futurist Website: https://nomadfuturist.org/

Ardian's very first investment in a data center company shows it is "quite convinced on the AI opportunity in Europe," says Pauline Thomson, Head of Data Science and a Managing Director at the $176 billion investment firm ⁠Ardian⁠. In a Cool Vector interview, Thomson describers the thesis behind Ardian's $1.2 billion investment in Verne, an Iceland-based, green data center company with pan-Nordic growth plans. She notes that Iceland is the "only country in the world powered by 100% renewable energy." Verne's other operations in the UK and Finland are similarly focused on renewable power, as is an additional property under development in Norway. Thomson expects low-carbon nuclear energy to eventually play a big role in the Nordic data center platform. Thomson explains that being a scaled provider of low-carbon, "sustainable compute" will give Verne an edge as a data center provider. "You need a lot of capital, because these are capital-hungry assets," she says. "And you need to scale the platforms to have sufficient importance on the market. If you want to attract customers that have a big demand for increased capacity, you need to show to them that you have a pipeline of projects, that you will be able to support them in their own growth. Otherwise you cannot become a partner of choice for these clients." Although the firm is a major investor in infrastructure around the world, Ardian had not previously invested in a data center platform, because until Verne they could not find a company that was a good fit for Ardian's thesis. The firm is attracted to data centers because of their critical importance to society, low correlation to GDP, revenue visibility, as well as the need to deploy capital in order to have a successful commercial strategy. Thomson says her firm expects the European data center market to grow by 27% CAGR over the next six years.  Ardian has named former Digital Realty CEO William Stein as Non-Executive Chairman of Verne.  Thomson explains Ardian's boots-on-the-ground edge in securing powered land across Europe, as well as in securing highly sought-after components necessary for data center development, prominently transformers.  Verne data centers will specialize in high-performance computing (HPU), requiring a specific configuration of racks and cooling technology. Ardian anticipates that as "agentic AI" gains wider use, such as with autonomous vehicles, data center architecture may need to be reconfigured yet again to take on the added compute.  As head of data science, Paris-based Thomson explains how her team has helped portfolio companies leverage their own data to capture greater efficiencies, including the creation of a resource called AirCarbon, helping airports analyze carbon emissions.  "Our relationship to compute has fundamentally changed," says Thomson. "There is compute everywhere in whatever we do. That's not going away." Access Cool Vector on Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4nsZ5LKkE5sBSb04tAf94P?si=f047c3d6b664458e ⁠ Visit the Cool Vector website: ⁠https://coolvectormedia.com

The data center industry is uniquely positioned to integrate workers from a broad array of backgrounds, which is good news, given the rapid aging of the industry's original workforce. According to three veterans of the industry, more needs to be done to elevate awareness of careers in data centers among workers in other industries, as well as among young people raised in a digital world, but unaware of the physical infrastructure necessary to keep the data flowing. This wide-ranging Cool Vector conversation includes Phill Lawson-Shanks of ⁠Aligned Data Centers⁠, Nabeel Mahmood of ⁠Mahmood⁠, and Phillip Koblence of Critical Ventures. All three are helping build a non-profit foundation called ⁠Nomad Futurist⁠, dedicated to demystifying the data center industry. Mahmood, CEO and co-founder of Nomad Futurist, begins the conversation with an overview of how much more digital the world will become, and the necessity of infrastructure to service this enormously expanded coverage. At the same time, the humans charged with building and managing the infrastructure are leaving the industry. Mahmood estimates that within five years, "there's going to be a retirement party. . . every day of the week." The demand for workers will not be confined within the walls of data centers themselves. Lawson-Shanks, an advisor to Nomad Futurist, anticipates a proliferation of new businesses around data centers globally, similar to the innovation acceleration that accompanied the advent of the iPhone. "We're at an iPhone moment again," he says. "No one anticipated the ecosystem that would develop around that piece of technology." There is "an amazing tsumani [of technology] that's coming," Lawson-Shanks says. Koblence, the other co-founder of Nomad Futurist, details the many types of career paths available within broader digital infrastructure. Koblence stresses the industry needs workers of every background. "People think you need to be a computer geek in order to work in a data center digital infrastructure, and that's simply not the case," he says. "If anything, the majority of the roles are non-computer focused roles, and more involved in the development and deployment of these sites that need to be everywhere." Koblence adds: "The people that are most successful in our industry tend to be the ones that have come from other industries, that have the ability to articulate and communicate in a way that is not necessarily second nature to someone who has a computer-focused or engineering-focused mindset." Lawson-Shanks notes his company, Aligned Data Centers, has had success recruiting workers from the US Navy nuclear submarine program, because these veterans are used to "having that methodology of procedures and policies. You don't just do things - there are checks and balances before every change." Koblence and Mahmood describe their visits to high schools, sometimes with tech executives from well known companies like Netflix and TikTok in tow, to help teenagers understand digital infrastructure. They say these native-digital young people are very engaged, smart, have access to a universe of information, and are concerned about environmental impact. The three veterans also agree that more needs to be done to educate communities about the positive impacts of data centers beyond direct and indirect job creation, including tax revenue. Visit the Nomad Futurist website: https://nomadfuturist.org/ Visit the Cool Vector website: https://coolvectormedia.com/

David Capobianco's company, ⁠LandBridge⁠, owns 270,000 surface acres in West Texas, and he's pleased to explain why the land's profitability has tripled in three years. The reason has to do with data centers. LandBridge is a publicly traded affiliate of Five Point Energy, of which Capobianco is CEO. The company's share price is being carefully watched by investors looking for evidence of a new paradigm in land ownership. Acreage once used primarily for ranching or energy extraction in the Permian Basin is now seen as ideal for data centers. n an wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Capobianco details the attractive features of his "powered land" in the Delaware sub-basin, spanning West Texas and New Mexico: it sits on top of the lowest-cost natural gas in North America, it has plentiful produced and brackish water for cooling, it is proximate to good fiber connectivity and carbon sequestration resources, and it is governed by an exceptionally friendly Texas regulatory regime. What's more, the Delaware land is far away from any population center, removing community apprehension as a barrier to development. LandBridge's surface acreage is "open for business," says Capobianco, meaning any potential digital infrastructure partner can expect rapid support in the development of data centers, including proprietary water infrastructure developed by LandBridge, which processes some 4 million barrels of water daily across the Permian. Cooling capabilities have become more and more critical as new technology, such as Nvidia's Blackwell chips, runs hotter and hotter. Capobianco describes the opportunity for renewable energy in the Permian as important but not sufficient on its own. Because hperscalers are locked in an "existential" battle for data center development, the more consistent energy provided by bountiful West Texas natural gas is in high demand. He says the only renewable energy capable of fully powering a data center is nuclear. He also details the business plan of LandBridge, which makes money from land leases as well as power margins and some mineral rights. Capobianco predicts well-suited land in the Permian and elsewhere will "re-rate" now that investors recognize a net new source of revenue in the form of digital infrastructure. Says Capobianco: "The need is great, the race is on."   ---   Visit the Cool Vector website: ⁠https://coolvectormedia.com/⁠ Watch clips from the episode by following Cool Vector on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/posts/?feedView=all⁠ and YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@CoolVector

Private equity firm ⁠Actis⁠ is building data centers around the world while maintaining strict standards around sustainable energy, water and social impact. And the firm's impact is about to get bigger. Actis and General Atlantic recently merged to create an $87 billion investment platform, with Actis focused on the huge opportunity in sustainable infrastructure, largely in growth markets across Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe.   Digital infrastructure is a significant part of the investment mandate for Actis, with 17 offices across the world. The firm draws on its on-the-ground expertise in real estate, renewable energy and infrastructure to tackle the many burgeoning opportunities in data centers, wireless towers and fiber. In a wide-ranging interview, Thomas Liu and James Magor, Partner and Director, respectively, describe a global build-out of data centers in global growth markets, most of which have not previously offered data center sites to hyperscaler customers. Each market has a very different regulatory regime, but most favor data sovereignty, and are led by governments aware of the developmental benefits that digital infrastructure can bring to their economies. Driving the development are expansion-minded hyperscaler customers like Amazon and Microsoft, which are locked in a competition for AI dominance around the world. Liu notes these hyperscalers need local partners with insights into local regulations, and the ability to maintain relationships of trust with local communities. For example, Actis has taken a successful digital literacy program from its operations in Nigeria and started using it to engage with communities across Asia. Liu and Magor discuss Actis' recent investment in Epoch Digital, a diversified data center platform with developments planned in South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan. Magor says the importance of resilient building techniques was highlighted by a recent Taiwanese typhoon that hit Epoch's construction site there. Liu explains the benefits of merging with General Atlantic, including an expanded investor base and the ability for Actis to draw on General Atlantic's deep relationships with TMT customers across the world. Visit the Cool Vector website here: ⁠https://coolvectormedia.com/

Data center real estate investment trusts (REITs), like Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, differ from traditional REITs in their higher operational intensity and reliance on artificial-intelligence tailwinds for growth, says Harold Chen, Director of Commercial Real Estate at Fitch Ratings. Chen, whose team has assigned investment-grade ratings to Equinix and Digital Realty, says the companies benefit from surging demand related to AI. Of the two, Digital Realty has a higher concentration of hyperscaler customers, defined as big-tech, data-center customers like Microsoft, Mega and Amazon. The upside of hyperscaler concentration is longer-term leases, while the downside is customer concentration and the inability to more frequently reprice rent rates, says Chen, adding data center REITs have a history of only single-digit customer churn. Data centers that cater to co-location customers tend to have shorter leases, he says. Data-center REITs also differ from traditional REITs in their "significantly higher levels of operational intensity," says Chen. Complexities like power, cooling and interconnectivity make data-center REITs "significantly different beasts." Chen also discusses with Cool Vector the impact that ESG and sustainability initiatives have on Fitch ratings, and the historic challenge for data center companies to access certain forms of financing, like asset backed securities (ABS). Visit the Cool Vector website: Cool Vector Media

"I kid you not. . . at least once a week, I've got a conversation going with somebody who sits in digital infrastructure private equity, and they say to me, 'If you know somebody, or a team, that does XYZ in the data center space, let me know. I'd love to meet them, because that is the type of business model that we could put hundreds of millions, if not not billions, into.'"   The amount of private capital available for deployment in digital infrastructure investments is far outpacing the supply of operational talent necessary to put it to work. Patrick Reyes, a Principal at infrastructure-focused executive search firm, ⁠One Search,⁠ says large private equity and infrastructure firms eager to enter the digital infrastructure asset class often have deeply researched ideas about where to invest, but lack the platform company or management team to executive the strategy.   Reyes shares these observations in the Cool Vector episode, "Why Comp is Surging for Digital Infrastructure Investors and Operators." Cool Vector website: ⁠https://coolvectormedia.com/⁠

Partners Group was already bullish on AI when, in 2022, the firm invested $1.2 billion in EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure. Then the debut of ChatGPT a few weeks later blew to lid off their initial assumptions of growth. In the post-ChatGPT world, the hyperscaler market served by EdgeCore saw an "explosion of demand for capacity," says Diffendal who, in a wide-ranging interview, explains the criticality of strong management in responding to the unexpectedly strong leasing activity. Two years later, the growth of EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure was such that "we basically ran out of money," says Diffendal. In September, Partners Group raised another $1.9 billion in capital, much of it in the form of co-investment from limited partners, institutional investors who had many questions about power availability and exit opportunities. Diffendal also discusses the imperative of keeping the data centers powered to a "five-nines" (99.999%) standard of up-time, to avoid getting financially penalized by "demanding" hyperscaler customers. As investors in data-center hub Northern Virginia, Diffendal describes the general shortage of all forms of labor there, including electricians. Partners Group's original thesis was that data centers would benefit from the tailwinds of cloud computing, video and AI. Diffendal adds: "I really think we're just at the very beginning of understanding what the commercial implications of AI will be." Visit the Cool Vector video-podcast website: https://coolvectormedia.com/

A conversation with Omar Jaffrey, founder of digital infrastructure private capital firm ⁠Palistar Capital⁠, which is currently investing from a $1.9 billion fund. Jaffrey gives a grand tour through the digital infrastructure investment opportunity, in which he says builders of scale will have advantages in winning customers. He cautions that some investors confuse the full stack of technology, services and human capital involved in the telecommunications industry with core infrastructure, the later of which has a history of more consistent performance. Among other topics, Jaffrey also makes the case for the long-term durability of infrastructure hard assets, comments on the pressures faced by potential sellers of wireless rooftop and tower assets, and explains the many options for revenue streams that owners of many towers can realize. Cool Vector website: https://coolvectormedia.com/

John Siegel, a Partner at private equity firm Columbia Capital, offers a deep dive into the physical assets necessary to power an AI-driven internet, including the fiber optic cables that connect the growing population of data centers around the world, and the nations jockeying for position to build digital infrastructure hubs. In a wide-ranging conversation, John shares his views on the demand drivers of information sharing, including not only AI but the massive proliferation of devices that connect to the internet. He details the data center build-out across Asia and explains why governments are so eager to develop hubs like his home base in Northern Virginia. A long-time telecom investor and "qualified bull," John also shares his analysis of a wave of bankruptcies in the early 2000s (which lost billions for private equity investors) and what lessons these might have for the current digital infrastructure build-out.   About Cool Vector Cool Vector is a video-podcast created to chart the rise of data centers and the digital infrastructure asset class. On a regular basis, the podcast will convene expert conversations about the investment opportunities and macro themes driving the build-out of digital infrastructure, including private capital dynamics, performance expectations, energy demand, geopolitical influences, sustainability opportunities, development and construction, technology and community impact. Cool Vector is hosted by financial journalist David Snow, a long-time chronicler of the alternative investment market. This interview should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation to invest, and the views and opinions expressed herein are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. - Watch this interview on the Cool Vector YouTube channel: YouTube

Digital infrastructure has a voracious appetite for energy, but the electric utility industry is filled with apprehension and lacks 'muscle memory' to 'build big things,' according to Brian Janous, co-founder of sustainable energy specialist Cloverleaf Infrastructure, as well as the former head of data center energy for Microsoft. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Janous describes how his mandate at Microsoft went from relative obscurity to a top-order concern among the company's leadership. He discusses how data center sites are identified, evaluated and the importance of finding a willing counter-party in the local utility. Janous also discusses the importance of community engagement, the risks of project delays and regulatory lags, the dominace of solar as a form of renewable energy for data centers, and the criticality of long-term power purchase agreements.   About Cool Vector Cool Vector is a video-podcast created to chart the rise of data centers and the digital infrastructure asset class. On a regular basis, the podcast convenes expert conversations about the investment opportunities and macro themes driving the build-out of digital infrastructure, including private capital dynamics, performance expectations, energy demand, geopolitical influences, sustainability opportunities, development and construction, technology and community impact. Cool Vector is hosted by financial journalist David Snow, a long-time chronicler of the alternative investment market.   Watch Full Episodes of Cool Vector on YouTube and Spotify.

Financial journalist David Snow introduces Cool Vector, a new video-podcast that will chart the rise of data centers and the digital infrastructure asset class. On a regular basis, Cool Vector will convene expert conversations about the role that institutional investment capital will play in the build-out of digital infrastructure around the world, and focus on the overlapping long-term trends of digitalization, the rise of private capital, changing energy demand, changing land and real estate use, innovation in sustainability, national security, and many other topics. Full video episodes of Cool Vector will live on the Cool Vector YouTube channel as well as the major podcasting platforms like Spotify. Clips of each episode will be promoted on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok. The Cool Vector video-podcast homepage is here: https://coolvectormedia.com/