Billion-dollar AI compute deals keep landing, and the grid and the water main still do not care about the press release. Welcome to The Data Center Daily. I’m Cassidy, with Devin. Today: IREN lands a $3.4 billion NVIDIA deal, Digital Realty raises three billion, and Germany takes another swing at the grid-interconnection mess. And Augusta wants to run your AI cooling loop on wastewater, which sounds either like smart infrastructure or a panic move. We’ll see. And Palo Alto’s planning commission just recommended new rules for a Google data center, so the permitting reality check is here too. Let’s get into it. Here's GlobeNewswire:
Under the agreement, IREN will provide NVIDIA with access to managed GPU cloud services for its internal AI and research workloads, including orchestration and cluster management software in collaboration with Mirantis.
The agreement will be serviced by air-cooled Blackwell platform systems to be deployed within approximately 60MW of IREN’s existing data centers at its Childress, Texas campus.
The total value of the five-year contract is approximately $3.4 billion.
IREN just announced a signed five-year AI cloud services contract with NVIDIA — $3.4 billion, served out of about 60 megawatts at Childress, Texas, using air-cooled Blackwell systems with Mirantis on orchestration. They’re calling it signed, not tentative. Sixty megawatts in Childress for $3.4 billion over five years? That’s a huge revenue-per-megawatt number if the full value really lands. I’d still want to see the take-or-pay before I get too cute about it, because “approximately” and “five-year” can hide a lot. Fair point. The release uses “approximately” on both the dollar figure and the megawatts, so yes, that’s doing some work. What isn’t fuzzy: NVIDIA is the off-taker, these are internal AI and research workloads, and IREN is clearly pitching itself as fully managed now, not just bare metal. NVIDIA buying managed cloud from a former Bitcoin miner in West Texas is not a sentence I had on my card either. Good for IREN if it holds up — but once they try to push past what’s already energized, Childress grid capacity and transmission headroom in that part of ERCOT are going to matter fast. This one's from Real Estate Investor:
Digital Realty, the Austin-based data center REIT with an $80 billion enterprise value, is launching multiple fundraising series as part of a strategic shift toward private funding for growth. The company plans to debut a US open-end fund targeting up to $3 billion in cornerstone investments, signaling a major pivot in capital strategy.
Digital Realty is launching a US open-end fund targeting up to three billion dollars in cornerstone investments. This is the biggest data center REIT by footprint, about $80 billion in enterprise value, and it’s pivoting hard toward private capital as a growth engine alongside the public markets. Open-end fund, cornerstone investors, “flexibility beyond traditional public markets” — that’s a lot of words for “we want capital without quarterly earnings scrutiny.” What’s actually getting built with this money, and where? That’s the missing piece in the release: no markets, no MW targets, no in-service dates. “Up to three billion” is a ceiling, not a commitment. So, yeah, let’s see what actually closes. Here's Liz Owens at WRDW/WAGT:
Augusta Utilities is one of the parties at the table with QTS, the developer behind the $2 billion, six-building data center campus near Fort Gordon.
“Daily, they’re anticipating using 18,000 gallons a day,” Augusta Utilities Director Wes Byne said.
That’s a drop in the bucket, even compared to the 60 million gallons of water Augusta Utilities pulls from the river every day.
QTS is pitching a $2 billion, six-building campus near Fort Gordon in Augusta, and the cooling-water conversation has Augusta Utilities at the table. The utility director says QTS is expecting 18,000 gallons a day, which he says is less than the evaporation at Clarks Hill Lake. Sure — and QTS also says, quote, “it’s hard to predict the exact amount of water needed,” because they’re still in planning. So that 18,000-gallon number is basically a placeholder, and the closed-loop claim is a design intent, not a commissioned system. Wastewater reuse for cooling is absolutely the direction you want to go — treated effluent instead of potable river draw is smart infrastructure. The question is whether this campus gets built to spec, or whether “closed loop” turns into “we need more water” once six buildings are actually loaded. 1.4 million people downstream on the Savannah River, and the utility director is doing the PR math for a private developer. I’d want to see the actual water-rights agreement before I called this settled. Dr. Christian Ertel, writing in TaylorWessing:
In recent years, grid connection in Germany has become the bottleneck of the energy transition and digitalisation. A number of projects are failing or facing significant delays, which is why calls within the industry for a reform of the grid connection procedure are growing ever louder. Market participants are calling for clear and standardised rules, digitalisation of the process and binding deadlines.
Germany’s grid package is official now — comprehensive amendments to the Energy Industry Act and the Renewable Energy Sources Act, aimed at unblocking grid connections that have been the biggest bottleneck for both the energy transition and data center buildout there. Translation: projects have been dying in queue for years, operators yelled loud enough, and Berlin finally wrote it down. The real question is whether these “binding deadlines” have teeth or just look nice on paper. The draft specifically calls out battery storage and renewables as focus areas, and there’s a dedicated review for data center operators attached to the package. That tells you pretty clearly who’s been in the room in Frankfurt and Berlin. KCRG, with Conner Woodruff:
Google dropped out of similar negotiations with Linn County earlier this year and is now working exclusively with the City of Palo. This center is set to go up near the Duane Arnold Nuclear Power Facility, which is coming back online largely to power the new data center.
The regulations in the ordinance Palo commissioners passed Monday night have several differences compared to the proposal Google was considering with Linn County.
Google walked away from similar talks with Linn County earlier this year and is now dealing directly with the City of Palo, Iowa — right next to Duane Arnold, the nuclear plant that’s coming back online largely to power this campus. And the second Google moves to a smaller jurisdiction, the water oversight gets thinner. Linn County wanted a local water study, a usage agreement, real enforcement power. Palo’s version just punts that to the Iowa DNR. Convenient. The economic development agreement also went from mandatory to “only if Google asks.” So the leverage the community had in the county deal just evaporated once Google picked the counterparty it wanted. That’s the playbook: shop jurisdictions until you find the one that’ll take the thinnest deal. Palo gets the logo on the press release. Linn County gets the stronger ordinance and gets ghosted. You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your attention, head there to read more.
That’s The Data Center Daily for this Tuesday, May 12th. Thanks for listening. This is a Lantern Podcast.