Four deals closed or got entitled in the past week and they read like the same memo. A $7.5 billion lease that won't tell you what state the building is in. A $225 million portfolio sale at $4.25 a watt that turns a telco's stranded colo into a billion-dollar AI platform. A North Carolina campus that lit its second 20 MW phase under a contract that pencils to roughly $2.16 million per megawatt per year. And an Arkansas county that banned data centers on a Tuesday and exempted the only one with a signed utility contract on the same Tuesday.

The common thread isn't geography. It's the tenant. Spec development as a business model is over. Capital prices off the name on the lease — and where a name exists, even an undisclosed one, the building gets financed, the campus gets exempted, the platform gets capitalized. Where it doesn't, the moratorium passes.

"Northern State, Investment Grade, 300 MW." Applied Digital Crosses 1 GW Without Naming the Town.

Applied Digital announced a fourth campus lease on Tuesday — Polaris Forge 3, 300 MW critical IT load, $7.5 billion in base contracted revenue over 15 years, up to $18.2 billion if options run — and the entire site disclosure in the 8-K is "a northern state." Not the county. Not the substation. Not even the state. APLD has confirmed Polaris Forge 1 is in Ellendale, ND and Polaris Forge 2 in Harwood, ND, but PF3 is being held back, presumably at the tenant's insistence, until shovels are in.

The tenant is the same "U.S.-based, high investment-grade hyperscaler" that signed Delta Forge 1 in April. APLD is now sitting on more than 1 GW of contracted capacity from a single counterparty across four campuses. The take-or-pay structure is consistent with prior Polaris leases — fixed monthly minimums against capacity reservations, NNN, escalators in the 2.5–3.0% range. The interesting fact isn't the dollar value. It's that the deal closes before the location is public. When the tenant's credit underwrites the entire stack, geography is a footnote.

Deal specs. Sponsor / tenant: Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) / undisclosed U.S.-based investment-grade hyperscaler · Site: "Northern state," 600+ acres — town n/d · Footprint: n/d (single-story AI-factory format consistent with PF1/PF2) · Load: 300 MW critical IT on ~430 MW gross utility · Power density: n/d · Lease: 15-yr take-or-pay, NNN, escalator n/d, high investment-grade tenant · Deal value: $7.5B base, up to $18.2B with options · Source: DCD.

$4.25 a Watt. I Squared Buys 53 MW From a Telco That Didn't Want It.

Cogent Communications filed an 8-K Tuesday disclosing the sale of ten colocation facilities — Phoenix, Anaheim, Burbank, Stockton, Atlanta, Chicago, Elkridge, Kansas City, Nashville, Houston — to I Squared Capital for $225 million cash. Total installed capacity across the portfolio is roughly 53 MW spread over about 259,000 square feet. The implied price works out to ~$4.25 million per megawatt. That is the kind of number you only see when the seller has stranded assets they inherited from a wireline bankruptcy and the buyer has a thesis.

The thesis is what makes this trade interesting. I Squared isn't just buying ten facilities; the firm committed up to $1 billion in additional platform capital to build out the assets into AI-focused colocation. Most of these sites are urban edge or inner-ring metro — Burbank, Anaheim, Kansas City — where the building exists, the fiber exists, the substation feeds exist, and the only missing variable is rack density. Per-MW pricing is cheap precisely because nobody else will pay legacy telco overhead to renovate them. I Squared just bought a low-cost-basis ramp into edge inference, with a closing dependent on HSR clearance on or after June 12.

The power density is the giveaway on what these sites are today versus what they'll become. 53 MW across 259 ksf is roughly 205 W/sf — that's voice-switch density, not AI density. Anyone buying at this price is underwriting a tear-out, a re-feed, and a re-densification.

Deal specs. Sponsor / seller: I Squared Capital (new platform) / Cogent Communications (NASDAQ: CCOI) via Cogent Fiber LLC · Site: 10 facilities across Phoenix, Anaheim, Burbank, Stockton, Atlanta, Chicago, Elkridge, Kansas City, Nashville, Houston — urban-edge sites within or adjacent to each city's limits · Footprint: ~259 ksf total · Load: 53 MW installed (~205 W/sf blended, legacy telco density) · Lease: Asset purchase, customer contracts transfer; closing on/after June 12, 2026 post-HSR · Deal value: $225M cash plus up to $1B platform commitment · Source: Cogent 8-K.

$2.16 Million per MW per Year. Nscale Lights Phase Two in Madison, NC.

Phase 2 of the WhiteFiber-Nscale colocation deal at the NC-1 campus in Madison, North Carolina begins billing on May 30. That puts the full 40 MW under contract at the Rockingham County site, about 30 miles north of Greensboro. Total contract value is approximately $865 million over ten years, with contractual annual rate escalators undisclosed but baked in. Run the math: $865M / 40 MW / 10 yr = ~$2.16 million per MW per year.

That number is the spec. Anyone underwriting GPU-grade colocation against a non-investment-grade neocloud counterparty — and Nscale, a UK-based AI infrastructure private, is exactly that profile — wants a benchmark for what the credit premium looks like. Roughly $2.16M/MW/yr is what the market is asking. Compare to the Polaris Forge structure, where the tenant is investment-grade and the implied per-MW-per-year run-rate on the $7.5B base is closer to $1.67M — about 22% cheaper for the higher credit. The lease is modified gross with power as a pass-through, not NNN, which is the other tell: WhiteFiber is taking the asset-utilization risk, Nscale is paying for the GPUs and the electrons. There's an option to roughly double Nscale's deployment over two years, which is the real prize if Nscale's funding ramp holds.

Deal specs. Sponsor / tenant: WhiteFiber Inc. (Bit Digital subsidiary, NASDAQ: WYFI) / Nscale (private, UK) · Site: NC-1 campus, Madison, NC — Rockingham County, ~30 mi N of Greensboro · Footprint: n/d · Load: 40 MW (Phase 1 20 MW billing 4/30, Phase 2 20 MW billing 5/30) · Power density: n/d · Lease: 10-yr modified gross, power pass-through, annual escalators (rate n/d), private/non-IG credit · Deal value: ~$865M total contract value · Source: DCK.

Arkansas' Largest County Bans Data Centers. Then Exempts the $6 Billion One.

The Pulaski County Quorum Court did both things at once on Tuesday night. A one-year moratorium on new data-center permits passed 10-5. An exemption for AVAIO Digital Partners' 760-acre Leo campus, just outside Wrightsville and about twelve miles south of downtown Little Rock, passed 8-7. The county chose. The deal that already had a signed Entergy Arkansas contract for 150 MW — expandable to 1 GW — survived. Everything else stops for a year.

The structure is what makes this an Edge Cases story rather than a community-fight story. AVAIO is a private Connecticut-based developer running what looks like a hybrid build-to-suit / pre-lease campus model — the company describes the program as "$6 billion in combined investment from AVAIO and its customers", which is developer-speak for "tenants are funding the buildout against signed leases." Tenant names have not been disclosed. Entergy expects construction to start in June 2026.

The takeaway for anyone shopping county overlays in the Mid-South: a signed utility interconnection contract executed before the political winds shift is the most valuable piece of paper on the deal. It's grandfather rights in everything but name. Counties that pass moratoria carve out the projects that are already wired, because killing those projects also kills the rate-payer cost-share the project sponsors agreed to. The carve-out isn't favoritism — it's the developer's own contract structure protecting them.

Deal specs. Sponsor: AVAIO Digital Partners (private, Connecticut) · Site: 760 acres outside Wrightsville, AR — Pulaski County, ~12 mi S of downtown Little Rock · Footprint: Multi-phase campus, building program n/d · Load: 150 MW initial under Entergy Arkansas contract, expandable to 1 GW · Power density: n/d · Lease: Developer build with tenant fit-out; pre-leased structure implied by "$6B combined AVAIO + customer" language · Deal value: $6B program cost · Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

What to Watch Next Week

Columbus, GA — Project Ruby first reading. Atlas/Habitat's $5.18B / 865-acre hyperscale campus zoning overlay was paused 45 days past the May 19 council election. First reading now expected late May or early June. This is the next big Southeast site with an actual proposed lease tenant attached.

Box Elder County, UT — Stratos referendum certification. O'Leary Digital's 9 GW off-grid campus, approved May 4 with Ruby Pipeline gas, faces a referendum challenge. Governor Cox publicly told the developer the project would "never" be 100% gas. Watch for referendum certification and the gas-to-grid pivot that the political math is now forcing.

Reno City Council moratorium follow-up. The May 14 special meeting on a temporary data-center permitting pause has a follow-up vote pending. Vantage's Storey County phase-2 commentary is expected on the same calendar.

AEP Ohio commission update. AEP filed an update with the PUCO on data-center load under contract; the Q2 update lands soon. Watch the large-load tariff filings around the Columbus / New Albany cluster — that's where the AES Indiana / Google Monrovia tariff template gets stress-tested.

Cogent–I Squared HSR clock. Closing on or after June 12. If I Squared moves fast, expect the first follow-on acquisition for the platform to be telegraphed by Q3.

Disclaimer: Edge Cases is Barrio Energy's deal-flow product. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation to transact, or a substitute for your own diligence. Specs are sourced from public filings, press, and reporting; verify before you wire anything.