Data Center Intelligence - Weekly Roundup (Dec 1-7)

December 9, 2025

In today's rapidly changing world of digital infrastructure, some major developments are influencing where the industry is headed. With the demand for data centers on the rise, thanks to advancements in AI and cloud services, investors and developers are dealing with a tricky mix of opportunities and challenges. We're seeing everything from long-term lease agreements taking off to exciting green energy projects coming into play. This week, we're diving into the latest trends, expansions, and shifts in regulations that are shaping the current landscape of data centers worldwide. As we take a closer look at these trends, it's clear that the balance between capital, technology, and community expectations has never been more important.

1. Industry trends

Capital flows, consolidation, and new service models

Blue Owl anchors a long duration data center vehicle
Blue Owl closed one point seven billion dollars for its new Digital Infrastructure Trust, seeded with interests in eleven United States data centers. The portfolio is anchored by long term leases to investment grade and hyperscale tenants and sits inside a pipeline Blue Owl says is above one hundred billion dollars of digital and power opportunities.
Source: InforCapital

NTT signs one hundred thirty megawatts of new hyperscale leases
NTT announced one hundred thirty megawatts of new hyperscale leases across Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, and Virginia. It is another sign that large cloud platforms continue locking in multi year capacity in established regions rather than waiting for greenfield AI campuses.
Source: Data Center Dynamics

Anthropic lays out a fifty billion dollar build plan
Anthropic and United Kingdom based partner Fluidstack outlined plans for as much as fifty billion dollars of data center development across the United States, beginning with Texas and New York. The approach reflects the new era of AI first campus planning.
Source: DataCenterKnowledge

Vultr stakes one billion dollars on an Ohio AI cluster
Vultr committed about one billion dollars to build a fifty megawatt AMD based AI cluster in Springfield, Ohio. The company expects the twenty four thousand GPU facility to be fully sold out before opening in early twenty twenty six.
Source: Reuters

Capital markets lean harder into digital infra
KKR joined the flow of capital into digital infrastructure with an investment into Compass Datacenters, alongside continued global deployment by other institutional investors. Meanwhile, IBM’s chief executive publicly questioned whether hyperscalers can earn their cost of capital at current spend levels, given the pace and magnitude of data center investments.
Sources: Fortune

Summary
Capital remains abundant, flexible, and innovative, but even established industry voices are beginning to question long term returns versus spend.

2. Future expansion

Land, campuses, and where the next wave is going

Virginia stays hot with another cluster of campus approvals
The December developments summary from Data Center Knowledge highlighted a fresh two billion dollar investment from Vantage in the Fredericksburg region for a one hundred ninety two megawatt campus, alongside CleanArc starting work on a nine hundred megawatt flagship campus in Caroline County and a newly approved one hundred eighty acre site in Powhatan County. Dominion is slated to deliver an initial three hundred sixty five megawatts of power to that last project.
Source: Data Center Dynamics

ASP DC buys a three hundred megawatt plus site in Finland
Norwegian developer ASP DC agreed to acquire CompassForge Real Estate I in Pori, Finland, a thirty seven hectare site with room to develop between three hundred and four hundred megawatts of capacity. It is a notable move north for a regional player and another marker that Nordic power and climate are still attractive for large scale compute.
Source: Data Center Dynamics

Coal plant to cloud in Pennsylvania
In Springdale, Pennsylvania, Allegheny DC Property Company, backed by a New York investment firm, purchased a former coal plant site for fourteen point three million dollars as the first step toward a large data center build. It is a clean example of heavy industrial land being recycled into AI era infrastructure, with all the usual questions about transmission upgrades and water use attached.
Source: Technical.ly

Wythe County in Virginia lands a new campus
Wythe County officials in Virginia announced a new data center campus at Progress Park, framed as a high technology, high wage jobs story for a rural region that wants to plug into the digital buildout without becoming another Northern Virginia style cluster. Some details on the operator and exact scale are still to come, but the direction of travel is clear.
Source: TechCrunch

Asia Pacific expansion steps up another gear
On the other side of the world, New South Wales approved a three point one billion dollar campus by CDC Data Centres in Marsden Park, described as the largest project of its kind in the southern hemisphere. In Southeast Asia, developers in Thailand are planning a park with a one gigawatt power platform, while Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City each saw announcements for one hundred twenty megawatt and two hundred megawatt AI focused facilities. Vantage also confirmed completion of a one point six billion dollar equity investment into its Asia Pacific platform, including acquisition of a three hundred megawatt hyperscale campus in Johor, Malaysia, which reinforces how quickly the region is scaling to meet AI and cloud demand.
Source: DataCenterKnowledge

Summary
The expansion map is now unmistakably global. The next wave is multi polar, with Asia Pacific accelerating faster than any other region.

3. Green energy and environmental pressure

How power, carbon, and community risk are evolving

Iberdrola and Echelon pair Spanish power with a Madrid campus
Iberdrola and Echelon Data Centres formed a joint company with more than two billion euros of planned investment, starting with Madrid Sur, a one hundred sixty thousand square meter campus with one hundred forty four megawatts of capacity and a secured two hundred thirty megawatt grid connection. The pitch sits at the intersection of Spanish renewable power and large scale compute.
Source: DataCenterKnowledge

atNorth turns waste heat into district heating in Denmark
In Denmark, atNorth reached a deal with utility Vestforbrænding that will move waste heat from its DEN01 data center into the local district heating system, with a goal of serving more than eight thousand homes by twenty twenty eight. The twenty two point five megawatt site uses direct liquid cooling and is now being positioned as both an AI facility and a source of community heat.
Source: DataCenterKnowledge

Richland, Washington, ties a data center to industrial growth
In Richland, Washington, a proposed data center is part of a broader plan to secure a one point five billion dollar fertilizer plant, with the city highlighting the importance of a new power intertie that can support both loads. The story is less about hyperscaler logos and more about how digital infrastructure is being bundled with traditional industry to justify major grid investments.
Source: Tri City Herald

Michigan tightens terms for data center power deals
Consumer advocates in Michigan scored a quiet yet important win as new standards were set for data center power agreements in the territory served by Consumers Energy. The framework is designed to ensure large loads pay an appropriate share of new infrastructure costs and that contract structures do not simply shift risk onto households, a theme we are going to see in more utility territories.
Source: Citizens Utility Board of Michigan

Project Jupiter in New Mexico becomes the latest emissions flashpoint
Reporting from Source New Mexico described Project Jupiter, a planned campus in Doña Ana County, where developers have asked regulators to approve air permits that would allow greenhouse gas emissions larger than those of the state’s two biggest cities combined, along with power generation on par with the largest utility in the state. It is an early test of how far regulators and communities are willing to go in accommodating gas heavy solutions to AI demand.
Source: Source New Mexico

Summary
Environmental and energy narratives now travel side by side with development announcements. The question is no longer about megawatts alone but about what those megawatts represent.

4. Government policy and community response

Incentives, oversight, and emerging pushback

Michigan regulators and residents push on Oracle and OpenAI deals
The Michigan Public Service Commission held a public hearing on December third on special power contracts between DTE Electric and an Oracle subsidiary tied to a planned one point four gigawatt data center in Saline Township, a project also associated with OpenAI and Related Digital. The case has become a touchpoint for concerns about bill impacts and the pace of large new loads, with approval possible as early as early December.
Source: Michigan.gov

Local moratoria move from talk to action
In Howell Township, also in Michigan, a separate one billion dollar data center proposal was put on hold after developers withdrew a rezoning request in the face of months of community pushback. The township board had already adopted a six month pause on new data center applications to give itself time to write more detailed rules, which the developer acknowledged in its public statement.
Source: Planet Detroit

PJM region sees calls to slow new large loads
In the PJM power market, states and residents are pressing federal regulators to give the grid operator more tools to say no. A recent filing recommended that PJM should not interconnect large new data center load unless it can be served reliably and suggested that future projects should be required to bring their own generation, whether through dedicated plants or large scale renewables, rather than leaning on shared capacity.
Source: Technical.ly

Policy thinkers nudge state and local officials toward tougher terms
Governing carried a piece arguing that this is the moment for states and municipalities to insist that data center developers make fair contributions toward the roads, substations, and transmission lines they depend on, instead of socializing those costs onto existing ratepayers. The article pointed out that once the contracts are signed and the infrastructure is built, leverage tends to disappear. Government Technology echoed a similar theme, noting that the rapid pace of expansion, particularly for AI workloads, is out in front of many communities and that transparency, community benefits, and clear water and energy safeguards are moving from nice to have to must have in local decision making.
Sources: GovTech

National environmental pressure steps up
Although the formal letters landed just after the week closed, more than two hundred environmental and public interest groups are now calling for a nationwide pause on new data center construction and related power plants until stronger rules on energy and water use are in place. Their argument, picked up by several outlets, is that projected growth in compute could push electricity and water use to levels comparable to tens of millions of homes within a few years.
Sources: The Guardian, The Verge

The policy backdrop is shifting from individual project fights to a more systematic debate. For operators, this means the bar is rising. You will need clearer community benefits, stronger energy strategies, and a much more proactive narrative around why your campus deserves scarce megawatts.

Strategic takeaways for the week

If you are involved in planning, financing, or regulating data centers these days, there are a few key trends that stood out from the past week.

First, while there is still plenty of capital available, it is becoming a bit more conditional. Both debt markets and private equity funds are keen to invest, but the deals that actually get done are often linked to larger platforms and solid plans for multi site portfolios.

Next, the geography of campuses is expanding. States like Indiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania are getting more involved, each with their own mix of resources, policies, and community stories. Tier one markets are still important, but growth is increasingly happening in places that can genuinely guarantee power and permits.

Then there is the energy discussion, which is shifting from whether to how. With long term renewable contracts, builds backed by gas and nuclear, and new on site generation models, the real question for boards is not whether they can get through the next connection queue. It is what energy narrative they want to embrace over the next decade.

Lastly, policy risk has become a significant concern. The pace of change around incentive scrutiny, transparency rules, and special contracts is picking up. Teams that treat policy as a simple box to check during site selection are likely to fall behind. A more strategic approach is to see regulators and local communities as long term partners and to design projects that can survive not just the next election but the next round of media coverage.

“Content is based on public information and personal analysis. Not financial or investment advice.”