Four sub-75 MW deals closed or cleared in the past seven days. Between them: 29 acres in Texas, three acres and a building in Arkansas, forty-one acres of a decommissioned Kodak campus in Colorado, and twenty acres under option in western Kentucky. Not one of them disclosed a building square footage. Which means the number this newsletter exists to compute — watts per square foot — is not computable for a single transaction in the transacting middle of this market.
That is not a research failure. That is the finding. The small end of this market has stopped buying buildings and started buying utility paperwork, and the paperwork is what gets priced. AIB Data Centers paid $313,189 per megawatt for two Texas parcels whose entire value is a pair of facilities extension agreements. Z Squared paid for eight interruptible megawatts in south Arkansas with stock it printed, then leased the building back to the seller for a dollar a year. Global AI cleared Weld County on a will-serve letter from a rural co-op. Sphere 3D offered to write an eight-figure check for a substation it will only use three-quarters of. The common thread is that in every one of them, the asset is the interconnection and the building is an afterthought — sometimes literally not mentioned.
$550,000 for an Energized Megawatt, $224,385 for a Dark One
AIB Data Centers (NYSE American: AIB) signed on September 4 and closed on September 11 the cleanest small-site comp of the year, and it is cleanest precisely because the company bought two parcels from two unrelated sellers on the same day at the same campus in two different states of readiness. Property A: 5.00 acres with an existing building shell and a live facilities extension agreement for 15 MW, for $8,250,000 in cash at closing. Property B: 24.385 adjacent acres, acquired through 100% of the membership interests in a Delaware LLC holding the right to fee title, carrying an FEA for 40 MW that has not yet been placed in service, for $8,975,400.
Run the arithmetic the way a buyer would. Property A clears at $550,000 per megawatt. Property B clears at $224,385 per megawatt. Same buyer, same campus, same closing date, and a 2.45x premium for electrons that are actually moving. That spread is the queue, priced in a single transaction, and it is the most useful number to come out of this week. The blended figure across all 29.385 acres and 55 MW is $313,189 per megawatt, or $586,195 per acre.
The structure carries the rest of the lesson. Six million dollars of the Property B consideration does not move until the "Release Date" — defined as the date the utility places the Property B facilities in service — and is secured by an irrevocable standby letter of credit. If the utility has not shown up by December 31, 2028, AIB may substitute a parent guaranty subject to creditworthiness tests. A second letter of credit, this one for $1,754,640, sits with the utility as performance security under the 40 MW FEA — $43,866 per megawatt just to hold the agreement open. The two contracts are expressly linked and had to close concurrently.
Note also where the aggregate stops. Fifty-five megawatts is under the 75 MW line ERCOT uses to classify large loads, which is a convenient place for a campus to land in a year when the large-load regime is the long pole. It does not, however, buy anyone out of the separate community-impact audit, which reaches every non-energized computational load at 25 MW and up. AIB's county, city and utility are all redacted in the filing under the confidential-information carve-out, so the site line below is genuinely blank. In a week defined by missing square footage, a missing address is almost restful.
Deal specs. Sponsor: AIB Data Centers Inc. (NYSE American: AIB) · Site: Texas; county, city and utility redacted in the 8-K — miles to city limits n/d · Land: 29.385 acres (5.00 + 24.385, adjacent) · Footprint: n/d — existing building shell on Property A, square footage not disclosed · Load: 55 MW (15 MW energized + 40 MW contracted); density n/d, no sf denominator; 1.87 MW/acre · Lease: n/a — fee acquisition, no tenant signed · Deal value: $17,225,400 ($313,189/MW blended; $550,000/MW energized vs. $224,385/MW contracted) · Credit support: $6.0M deferred payment LC + $1,754,640 utility LC · Source: Form 8-K.
A Dollar a Year, Paid Entirely in Paper, Closed Inside Two Moratoria
Z Squared (Nasdaq: ZSQR) closed on Paradox Data LLC and its Union County Campus at 713 Industrial Road in El Dorado, Arkansas on September 8 and filed the terms on September 14. No cash changed hands and no debt was incurred. The consideration was 5,000 shares of newly designated Series A convertible preferred with a $5.0 million stated value, convertible at $7.45, with up to $20 million more in the same instrument payable against four milestones — first energization of AI compute, then a binding request for service and an energization event at each of 50, 100 and 150 MW. Roughly eighty percent of the headline $25 million is contingent on a buildout that has not started.
What the buyer actually acquired is 8,000 kVA — about 8.0 MW, interruptible — from Entergy Arkansas, three acres with a building, and a contract on ten adjacent acres. At closing that is $625,000 per energized megawatt. Some secondary coverage put the figure at 80 MW. The filing says 8,000 kVA. A factor of ten is a large thing to lose in transcription, and it is worth checking the exhibit yourself before you underwrite anything off a trade headline.
The leaseback is the part to steal. Under a triple-net lease and relocation agreement dated the same day, the acquired subsidiary is landlord and the seller is tenant, continuing to mine bitcoin in the building at a base rent of $1.00 per year for a term expiring no later than the second anniversary. Rent was never the point; time was. Z Squared is a party solely as to a one-time $500,000 relocation payment on specified triggers, and its aggregate monetary liability under the lease is capped at that figure. Two open items belong in any diligence memo: the Entergy service agreement is still held by the seller and its assignment requires a consent that has not been obtained, and the company's CTO holds an indirect minority interest in the seller, disclosed and cleared by the audit committee as a related-person transaction.
The timing is the tell. Union County is running a data center moratorium through 2027 and the City of El Dorado's own runs to November. Buying an energized, grandfathered site inside a moratorium is not a workaround; it is increasingly the whole strategy.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Z Squared Inc. (Nasdaq: ZSQR), acquiring Paradox Data LLC from Paradox Infrastructure LLC · Site: 713 Industrial Road, El Dorado, Arkansas (Union County) — at/near the city limit, exact setback n/d · Land: ~3 acres with existing building, plus contract on ~10 adjacent acres · Footprint: n/d — building sf not disclosed · Load: 8.0 MW (8,000 kVA), interruptible, Entergy Arkansas; density n/d, no sf denominator · Lease: triple-net leaseback to seller, $1.00/yr base rent, term ≤2 years, no escalator, $500,000 relocation cap; private crypto-pivot tenant credit · Deal value: $5.0M Series A preferred at closing ($625,000/MW), up to $25M with milestones · Source: Form 8-K.
Forty-One Acres of Kodak, and a Will-Serve Letter Good for Three Years
Weld County commissioners voted 5-0 on September 9 to grant Global AI a use-by-special-review permit for a 41-acre data center on the former Carestream Health campus — Eastman Kodak's old Colorado division — at 2000 Howard Smith Avenue West in unincorporated Weld County, adjacent to the Town of Windsor's boundary and roughly sixty miles north of Denver. The daylong hearing drew more than 400 written comments, most of them opposed. It passed anyway, on the reasoning that a data center is a proper reuse of an industrial campus already zoned light-industrial.
The land basis is the cheapest of the week by a wide margin. Global AI bought the full 438 acres for about $15.6 million late last year — $35,616 per acre — from a local developer who had picked up the shuttered Carestream site for $3.5 million nine months earlier. That is roughly a 4.5x markup on dirt in three quarters, with no vertical improvement in between, and it is the clearest illustration going of what entitlement plus proximity to a substation is worth right now.
The power evidence is thinner than the vote suggests. Global AI's proof of service was a will-serve letter from Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association for 35 MW against a 27.5 MW first phase, and opposing counsel put on the record that the letter commits the co-op for only three years and does not describe how the power physically reaches the site. Co-op paper is clearing entitlement. Whether it clears a construction lender is a different question, and one the next six months will answer. Conditions attached: closed-loop cooling, a 65,000-gallon initial fill with roughly 6,500 gallons of annual top-off, noise capped at established ambient, and a decommissioning bond. The company is separately negotiating a pre-annexation agreement with Greeley, which is where the long-term water would come from.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Global AI (New York); site acquired from local developer Martin Lind · Site: 2000 Howard Smith Ave. W, unincorporated Weld County, CO — outside any city limits, adjacent to the Town of Windsor boundary, ~60 mi N of Denver · Land: 41 acres of a 438-acre former Carestream/Kodak campus; 8 existing buildings, adaptive reuse · Footprint: n/d — building sf not disclosed · Load: 27.5 MW Phase 1 against a 35 MW PVREA will-serve letter; density n/d, no sf denominator; 0.67 MW/acre · Lease: n/a — fee-owned, no tenant disclosed · Deal value: $15.6M for 438 acres ($35,616/acre; $567,273/MW on land basis, Phase 1) · Source: CPR News.
DarkHorse Will Build the Utility a 65 MW Substation and Keep Fifty of It
Sphere 3D (Nasdaq: ANY), operating as DarkHorse Technologies, priced a $5.0 million private placement on September 8 and closed it on the 11th: 1,666,661 units at $3.00, each a common share plus a five-year warrant struck at $3.50. The unit price was a 29% premium and the warrant strike a 51% premium to the prior close, with a six-month lock-up — terms that only get written when insiders are buying, and three directors including the chairman and the CEO took about a fifth of the raise. It funded alongside $4.6 million of housecleaning: an Iowa site sold for $1.5 million and roughly 5,500 legacy miners sold for about $3.1 million.
The proceeds back roughly twenty acres under option in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, for a proposed 50 MW facility. The interesting term is not the site, it is the offer attached to it: DarkHorse has proposed to self-fund a 65 MW substation for Hopkinsville Electric System at $8 million to $10 million and release the surplus 15 MW to the utility's other customers. That prices at $123,000 to $154,000 per megawatt of substation built, or $160,000 to $200,000 per megawatt actually retained — which, set against what energized capacity trades for, is cheap goodwill in a country where the binding constraint has become the zoning hearing. The company's own framing is unusually blunt for a deck: right-sized 10 to 50 MW AI factories in the range hyperscale overlooks. Power across its TVA fleet runs about $49 per megawatt-hour. There is still no AI or HPC customer signed at any of its sites, and Hopkinsville's data center zoning ordinance — which we covered when the draft first set its thresholds — has not had its second public hearing yet.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Sphere 3D Corp. (Nasdaq: ANY) d/b/a DarkHorse Technologies, via North Campbell Land Co. · Site: ~20 acres under option in Hopkinsville, KY (Christian County) — parcel undisclosed, separate from the existing Holland Substation operation; miles to city limits n/d · Footprint: n/d · Load: 50 MW proposed, behind a 65 MW substation with 15 MW released to the utility; density n/d, no sf denominator · Lease: n/a — development commitment subject to zoning and TVA/HES approval; no tenant signed · Deal value: $5.0M placement at $3.00/unit; $8–10M substation ($123k–$154k/MW built) · Source: Investor presentation, Form 8-K.
The Only Two Buildings Anyone Measured This Week: 429 and 350 Watts a Foot
Both of these are over the 75 MW line and normally would not run here. They run here for one reason: they are the only projects in the past seven days that disclosed a square footage at all, which makes them the sole source of a power-density comp — the benchmark every deal above will eventually be priced against. That is the exception, and it is worth naming rather than pretending otherwise.
Thor Equities filed a development-of-regional-impact application with Georgia's Department of Community Affairs on September 4 for the Kingston Technology Hub — 350,000 square feet on roughly 560 acres off State Route 293, inside the city limits of Kingston in Bartow County, about sixty miles north of downtown Atlanta. One billion dollars, 150 MW from the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, delivery targeted 2030, fifty full-time jobs and 50,000 gallons of water a day. Divide it out and the design density is 428.6 watts per square foot, at $6.67 million per megawatt and $2,857 per square foot of building.
A week earlier Edged topped out OMA01-1 and OMA01-2 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, at College Road and East Kanesville Boulevard, inside the city limits in Pottawattamie County — two buildings of about 285,445 square feet each against a site reportedly totaling 200 MW. That works to 350.3 watts per square foot, identically per building. The parcel had been entitled for a logistics park in 2021 that never got built, which is its own small commentary on land use in 2026. Deal value, lease structure and tenant are all undisclosed.
Four hundred and twenty-nine watts a foot was an aggressive spec two years ago. It is now the number a new-build files on its zoning application, in a county, on the record, five years before delivery.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Thor Equities (Form8tion), via Thor Acquisitions WC LLC · Site: off GA-293, within Kingston city limits, Bartow County, GA — ~60 mi N of downtown Atlanta · Land: ~560 acres · Footprint: 350 ksf · Load: 150 MW from MEAG (428.6 W/sf at full utilization) · Lease: n/d — no tenant disclosed; DRI application filed Sept. 4, delivery targeted 2030 · Deal value: ~$1.0B ($6.67M/MW; $2,857/sf) · Source: DCD.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Edged (Koch Real Estate Investments portfolio company); Turner Construction and Jacobs · Site: College Rd. and E. Kanesville Blvd., within Council Bluffs city limits, Pottawattamie County, IA · Footprint: ~570.9 ksf across two buildings (~285.4 ksf each) · Load: ~200 MW site total (350.3 W/sf, identical per building) · Lease: n/d — tenant and structure undisclosed · Deal value: n/d · Source: DCD.
What to Watch Next Week
Portland votes Wednesday on a 20 MW notification trigger. The council takes up a resolution discouraging non-disclosure agreements with developers and requiring notice whenever a company seeks to build or expand a facility drawing 20 megawatts or more. Portland has seventeen smaller facilities and no hyperscale, which is exactly why the threshold matters — it is set at the floor of the band this newsletter covers, and other cities will copy the number before they copy the reasoning.
Prince William County holds its public hearing September 22. The planning commission has already recommended ending by-right data center development entirely, shrinking the 2016 Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, and imposing a 500-foot buffer from homes and schools with a 120-day grace period. Loudoun's own grandfather-clause amendment comes up October 6. Between them this is the largest single repricing of entitlement value outside Texas.
The ERCOT community-impact audit runs to a December 10 filing. Roughly 157 projects and 8.8 gigawatts sit in the 25-to-75 megawatt band that the audit captures regardless of large-load classification — ownership, controlling interests, public financial assistance, on-site generation, projected and peak load, water consumption and cooling technology, all of it due ahead of a Legislature that convenes in January. Every developer who sized under 75 MW to stay out of the queue regime now owes a filing nobody underwrote.
Vulcan's October note redemption. Vulcan Infrastructure and Power closed a $39.4 million placement on September 10 with Machine Investment Group, Atlas Holdings and Conversant Capital, largely to retire 8.50% senior notes due next month and hold a 34-acre, 40 MW position in Columbus, Mississippi until capacity arrives in Q3 2027. Watch the terms: forced conversion at 215% of VWAP, a make-whole through the second anniversary, and a Black-Scholes cash put on the warrant.
Two moratoria expire in November. El Dorado's city moratorium — the one Z Squared just closed a deal inside of — lapses in November, while Union County's runs to 2027. Charlotte's 150-day pause expires November 5 with staff already recommending an extension. Watch which of these come back narrower rather than longer; the Gallatin, Tennessee council has been explicit that it is trying to write a rule that separates edge facilities from hyperscale, and whoever drafts that language first will get copied nationally.
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.
