Cool Vector

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.

• 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:

• 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.

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.

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:

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