Cool Vector

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