SitePower

The Interconnect

Issue 06  ·  October 2026

In October the money priced data-centre deals on two signatures — who supplies the power, and who signs the lease. Have both and you borrowed at record tights. Miss one and you waited.

The Read

Nobody ran short of money in October. What got scarce was the patience for deals missing a name on the dotted line. Read the month’s financings side by side and one pattern does almost all the work: the price of capital was set by two signatures — the party that supplies the power, and the party that signs the lease.

With both on file, money came cheaper than this sector has seen. Hut 8’s $4.25bn Beacon Point notes priced at T+165 on 95% loan-to-cost, which J.P. Morgan called a record for a data-centre construction bond. EdgeCore closed a $521m green ABS on a fully leased Santa Clara building. Lambda borrowed $1bn investment grade at 6.78% fixed, secured on contracts with two investment-grade offtakers.

Without them, the same market went quiet. KKR’s Helix has more than $11bn committed and, by its own executive’s account, none of it allocated — valuation gaps and costly debt. Firmus reportedly cut its IPO price. A South Korean data-centre builder fell 32% on debut. Morgan Stanley expects data-centre ABS spreads to widen further, with lending leaning ever harder on pre-leases to the big four hyperscalers. Same asset class, same month, two prices.

The power signature mattered just as much. The approvals that cleared were the campuses that bring their own generation: Taylor, Texas voted 5–0 for a 1 GW campus with a dedicated 750 MW gas plant; Glendale approved the $36bn Project Eagle with ~700 MW on site. The projects leaning on the neighbours’ grid met a different October — at least ten new US moratoria or permit pauses in our briefs, and Amazon walking away from its Ashburn plan after a backlash.

And the hyperscalers have worked out which signature they can buy. Google signed for 890 MW of nuclear uprates over 20 years, a 702 MW fuel-cell plant in Wyoming, and paid for Entergy’s generation in Arkansas. If you are the tenant, you can increasingly be the power company too. If you are not, you need someone who is.

The Month in Power

If you track five moves, track these.

Leased paper prices like infrastructure; the rest waits. Hut 8’s $4.25bn at T+165 (per J.P. Morgan), EdgeCore’s $521m ABS and Lambda’s $1bn Baa1 loan all confirmed the template: an investment-grade signature on the lease is the collateral. Helix’s $11bn+ sitting unallocated is the other side of the same coin.

Bring-your-own-power won the votes. Taylor TX (1 GW, 750 MW dedicated gas, first 500 MW 1H28) and Glendale’s Project Eagle (~700 MW on site, first building 2028) were both approved. AWS filed at Homer City, a former 2 GW coal site whose on-site gas will export more than 1 GW back to the grid. Meanwhile moratoria or permit pauses landed in Ohio, California, Louisiana, Kentucky and Oregon — and projects in Texas, Nevada and Colorado ran into court challenges.

OCP makes 800 VDC and liquid the default. NVIDIA contributed Vera Rubin rack designs; MGX 1.2 supports racks up to 250 kW with a liquid-cooled 5,000 A busbar. Trane/LiquidStack and Daikin brought 2.5 MW CDUs; Vantage reserved 1 GW+ of solid-state transformer capacity (unconfirmed). OCP also published a grid-resilience spec targeting near-full load restoration within two seconds. The rack spec is settled; the site has to keep up.

Google buys the generation, not just the energy. Confirmed in October: a 20-year PPA for 890 MW of nuclear uprates with Constellation (earlier reports put it at 3.6 GW), AEP’s ~$4bn, 702 MW fuel-cell plant near Cheyenne, Entergy Arkansas phase 2 (~$600m, Google pays) and AES Indiana’s $1.3bn approval. Paying for the grid is how the largest tenant buys its way past the queue — and the objection.

M&A moves down the stack. Vertiv completed its ~$1.45bn UtilityInnovation Group deal (microgrid controls); CBRE agreed Onnec for $610m upfront, up to ~$1.01bn; Schneider–PTC ($22bn) awaits regulators; Trane–LiquidStack is reported (~75%). At platform level, TPG is reportedly in talks for Ark at ~$5bn (~65%). The buyers want the layer that switches the megawatts on.

From the Desk

Two signatures, one spread.

For most of this year we have written about the gates a project has to pass: power, permission, time. October made the scoring simpler. A lender now looks at two names. Who is contracted to deliver the electrons, and who is contracted to pay for the space. With both, money is cheap. With one, it is expensive. With neither, it is a press release.

That is also the most honest description of what a matching layer is for. Plenty of good sites are one signature short: land with a power path but no tenant, a tenant with a deadline but no power, capital waiting for both. The work is putting the two names on the same parcel before the spread decides for you. Helix’s unallocated billions say the capital is ready the day that happens.

The Call

Stop asking whether a project is big enough. Ask who has signed. If you build technology, be the power signature a campus can bank. If you develop sites, show up with one signature and a credible path to the second. If you deploy capital, go looking for the deals one name short — that’s where the spread still pays.

Capital doesn’t price the site. It prices who signed.

— Nigel Broomhall, SitePower

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