Welcome to Global Data Center Hub. Join investors, operators, and innovators reading to stay ahead of the latest trends in the data center sector in developed and emerging markets globally.
In this week’s issue:
First, a utility gave up the one thing utilities never give up. Georgia Power won approval to serve OpenAI’s 3.2GW Effingham County campus and agreed to recover no shortfall from other customers if OpenAI leaves early. Nobody outside the room has read the contract, so who carries that cost instead?
Then, Nvidia kept buying the layer beneath its own customers. It took a minority stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a powered-land developer founded in 2024 with a pipeline above 10GW. That is the third land and power position in a month, after Lancium and SB Energy.
Finally, Spain made cheap renewables the barrier to entry. A fast-tracked draft decree would make new data centers above 1MW match 80% of every hour’s consumption with new renewable generation. The penalty is loss of grid access.
Let us get into it.
What Georgia Sold to Get 3.2 Gigawatts
A regulated utility gave up guaranteed cost recovery and nobody can read the price. Georgia Power won staff approval on 26 August to serve OpenAI’s Project Camellia in Effingham County. The contract covers 3,200 megawatts over 25 years. OpenAI puts the campus investment at $20 billion.
The concession is specific. Georgia Power will not recover any revenue shortfall from other customers if OpenAI terminates early. It must tell the commission within fifteen days of any large-load cancellation. OpenAI pays the full cost of the infrastructure built to serve it.
Commission staff cleared the contract with no commissioner vote, under a rule the commission wrote in April 2025. The public version is entirely redacted. So are the six other data center contracts Georgia Power has filed under that rule.
So here is the discipline. Georgia Power’s protection is a promise, and the promise sits inside a document you cannot read. Before you treat a utility’s ratepayer pledge as protection, ask what the filing would have to disclose, then go and check whether it does.
What Georgia Power bought with it, and the filing that would show whether the trade holds, is below.
THIS WEEK BY REGION
The week’s biggest moves — what happened and what it signals.
North America
Termination risk became the term being negotiated. Georgia Power won approval for its OpenAI contract with no recovery from other customers if OpenAI leaves. Nvidia took a minority stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, its third land and power position this month.
nVent agreed to buy Maverick Power for $1.75 billion, with up to $550 million tied to 2027–28 performance. Anthropic reportedly committed $45 billion over six years for 460MW at Nscale’s West Virginia campus. Neither company confirmed the terms.
If you invest in public equities, the vendors are now buying their own demand, and that changes what a backlog is worth.
Europe
Europe is writing the entry rules before capital arrives. Spain agreed to fast-track a draft decree requiring data centers above 1MW to match 80% of hourly consumption with new renewables.
The penalty escalates to loss of grid access. Projects already in the permitting queue get six months to comply or forfeit their connection rights without compensation.
If you develop assets, a queue position in Spain is now conditional on generation you have not built.
Asia-Pacific
Capital in the region is moving toward power at source. Zerra DC lodged a development application for the Western Downs Digital Park, proposing four 360MW buildings for 1.44GW of IT capacity near the Braemar substation.
Cushman & Wakefield puts regional data center asset values above $950 billion by 2030, requiring over $280 billion in new capital. Japan accounts for nearly a quarter of that.
For infrastructure funds, the binding constraint is deliverable capacity, and Queensland is the test case for clearing it.
South America
Colombia’s expansion is carrying its own credit. Equinix raised Bogotá investment to $73 million, completing BG2 at 1,100 cabinets across 6MW to 7MW.
If you sit at a project finance institution, Colombia’s credit quality is settled, and the open question is whether anchor demand ever arrives.
PUBLISHED THIS WEEK
NVIDIA Did Not Guarantee The Rent. It Guaranteed The Resale. — NVIDIA committed up to $105 billions of residual value guarantees on SB Energy’s Ohio AI data center campus on August 17. Inside the recovery waterfall and the undisclosed minimum value.
The Texas Pause Is Not The Constraint. Docket 59220 Is. — Governor Greg Abbott froze 474 gigawatts of ERCOT data center interconnection requests on August 3. Inside the 525.5 MW curtailment order, the 30-minute shutdown rule, and the December 10 report.
The Four-Year Wait for a Transformer (And Why It Decides How Fast AI Grows) — Every AI answer runs through a steel box that takes more than two years to order. That wait sets the pace of the AI buildout.
Procurement Strategy: Equipment, EPC, and the Contracts That Set Your Timeline — Long-lead equipment, vendor concentration, EPC versus design-build, fixed-price and GMP risk allocation, liquidated damages.
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What Georgia Power Bought With It
The utility took a curtailment right in exchange. OpenAI committed up to 1,000 megawatts of flexible demand response. That is close to a third of the load, released back to the grid on request. Georgia Power can serve peak demand without building generation for the full 3,200 megawatts.
The economics run on that trade. Georgia Power projects about $950 million a year of incremental large-load revenue. It projects $2.8 billion of customer savings between 2029 and 2031, and roughly $180 a year off residential bills from 2029.
Those are utility projections filed with the commission. They are not commitments. The bill reduction also depends on enough large-load contracts clearing the commission, and one contract does not deliver it.
What the trade cost is not disclosed. The tariff rate OpenAI pays, the demand-response compensation and the termination terms are redacted. Without those three numbers, nobody outside the commission can tell whether the curtailment right covers the recovery Georgia Power surrendered. A missing disclosure is a finding.
The marker to here watch here is Georgia Power’s 2028 rate adjustment. That filing has to show the large-load revenue actually collected against the $950 million projection. If the number lands short and the bill reduction does not arrive, the commission will have to defend a contract it never voted on.
NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS
Key structures and capital moves from this week’s deal tape.
nVent: $1.75 billion definitive agreement to acquire Maverick Power
nVent is acquiring McKinney switchgear maker Maverick Power for $1.75 billion in cash and new debt, with Bank of America providing the bridge. The deal values Maverick at about 11.5× 2026 adjusted EBITDA, plus a $550 million earnout.
If you underwrite industrials, the mechanism is the earnout, because it prices the buyer’s own doubt about how long the switchgear shortage lasts.
Cloverleaf Infrastructure: undisclosed minority investment from Nvidia
Nvidia took a minority stake in Cloverleaf and agreed to use its DSX design across a 10GW pipeline. The specification lock effectively turns the supplier relationship into a demand guarantee without balance-sheet consolidation.
For operators, the mechanism is standard setting bought with equity, and it decides whose racks fit the sites coming to market in 2028.
Anthropic: reported ~$45 billion, six-year capacity commitment at Nscale
Bloomberg reported a six-year, roughly 460MW commitment at Nscale’s West Virginia campus, later followed by CNBC and Reuters, though unconfirmed. The offtake contract effectively provides project credit to the developer.
If you buy neocloud paper, the mechanism is offtake standing in for balance sheet, and the term length decides whether it holds.
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Have a great week.
— Obi