➤ SIGNAL
Site selection logic has inverted. For two decades, industrial and commercial development followed rooftops, ports, and labor. Hyperscale follows megawatts. Amazon assembling 1,300 contiguous acres in Bastrop isn't a real-estate play in the traditional sense — it's a bet on securing interconnection and power capacity before competitors lock the grid. The land is cheap relative to the constraint that actually matters.
The second signal is in the lease structure. When hyperscalers had all the leverage, leases carried hair-trigger termination rights that made them hard to finance. The shift to financeable offtake terms means lenders are now underwriting these deals like long-term infrastructure credit — which is what unlocks the debt that funds the ~$1.2T buildout.
Implications
Developers/operators: Control of power and entitlements is now the scarce asset; land basis is secondary. Underwrite interconnection timelines, not just rent.
Investors: Financeable leases mean these assets are becoming debt-financeable infrastructure — a deeper capital pool, but also more rate-sensitive.
Risk to challenge: 100 GW of announced capacity assumes power delivery that grids may not meet on schedule; "announced" ≠ "energized."
Key Takeaways
- “In the AI cycle, the developer who controls the substation controls the deal.”
- “Source: Bloomberg / CoStar / Bisnow — filed late Feb 2026, launch targeted 2026 · Capital · Digital Infrastructure”
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