On Thursday, CNBC reported that Anthropic and OpenAI are both shopping data center allocations of 20 to 30 MW — sounded out across the UK and the Nordics, with sources saying both companies have discussed similar deployments in the United States. Two frontier labs that have spent a year signing gigawatt paper are now asking about buildings the size of the ones this newsletter covers. Not because small is elegant. Because inference shards across sites and a 25 MW hall energizes three years sooner than a 500 MW campus.
That was Thursday. The rest of the week said the same thing in four other dialects. Soluna filed an interconnection request for another 50 MW in the Texas Panhandle and said in the filing, in so many words, that it sized it to fall under the large-load threshold. Host Digital's merger filings finally broke out what it paid for a converted Oklahoma building versus what it paid for the electric service agreement attached to it, and the answer will reorganize how you underwrite a retrofit. Nscale's S-1 put the first public price on what an NVIDIA guaranty costs a tenant. And in Bulloch County, Georgia, eleven residents sued a city over whether 99 MW is an edge data center or a hyperscale one.
A note on size discipline, since four items below carry loads above 75 MW: each is here because it publishes a comp the smaller band prices off — a guaranty rate, a suite module, a $/kW-month — not because it is a big campus. Digital Realty's 672 ksf Garland filing is the clearest example. DFW45 is an 80 MW building, which is not this newsletter's beat, except that it is built as ten 8 MW suites. Eight megawatts is the module. A 25 MW tenant buys three of them. That is the entire market in one TDLR filing: 119 W/sf gross, $3.75M per MW of build cost, sold in eighths.
Host Digital Paid $27.7 Million for a Building and $33.5 Million for the Right to Plug It In
We ran the East Tulsa site two issues ago at $161 a kilowatt-month. What we did not have then was the cost basis, because it was not public. It is now. Host Digital's super 8-K on Sept 17 and its 424B5 on Sept 21 break the acquisition into its two halves, and the halves are not the size you would guess. The building and parking lot went under contract for $27.7 million. T-20 Mining LLC — an entity whose meaningful asset is the electric service agreement — was acquired in February for roughly $33.5 million. The power contract cost 21 percent more than the real estate.
Run it per megawatt and it is cleaner still: about $779,000 per contracted IT megawatt for the ESA alone, against $346 a square foot for the box. Nobody in this market has been able to point at a public number for what a live meter is worth separate from the slab underneath it. Now there is one. Anyone still pricing conversions off comparable-building sales is pricing the wrong asset.
The filings also disclose a second Oklahoma site that had not surfaced before: roughly 16 MW of critical IT load on a 12-year take-or-pay to a publicly traded AI cloud provider, about $391 million over the base term and $819 million if it runs the full 22 years. That works out to roughly $170 a kilowatt-month on average — a premium to the Tulsa building's $161, on a shorter term and a smaller block. Two caveats worth carrying: the escalator on Site II is not disclosed, and the investment-grade backstop on Tulsa has not taken effect. It is conditioned on the project financing closing, and Host disclosed a $27.5 million working capital deficit at July 31 alongside a going-concern note. The lease is real. The credit enhancement is a plan.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Host Digital Inc. (NYSE American: HOST), f/k/a Healthy Choice Wellness · Site: Site I within Tulsa city limits, Centergate Business Park, east Tulsa; Site II "northeast Oklahoma," address and mileage n/d · Footprint: 80+ ksf (Site I); n/d (Site II) · Load: 43 MW critical IT (Site I, ≤537.5 W/sf — ceiling, computed on the disclosed "80,000+" sf); 16 MW (Site II, density n/d) · Lease: Site I 15-yr take-or-pay, 3.0% annual escalator, renewable to 30 yrs, ~$1.25B base term; Site II 12-yr take-or-pay, escalator n/d, ~$391M base term · Tenant credit: unnamed large private cloud (Site I) and unnamed public AI cloud (Site II); IG backstop disclosed but not yet effective · Acquisition: $27.7M building and lot (~$346/sf) plus ~$33.5M for T-20 Mining LLC and its ESA (~$779k per contracted IT MW) · Source: Form 8-K, Ex. 99.2 and 424B5.
NVIDIA's Signature Costs 6.97 Percent, and Now We Have the Receipt
Every landlord who has been handed a non-investment-grade neocloud tenant in the last eighteen months has been told there is a parent backstop and has had no way to price it. Nscale's S-1, filed Sept 18, prices it. NVIDIA guarantees up to $860,340,000 of Nscale's obligations under a net lease on the Ward County, Texas facility. The consideration Nscale gave up: warrants for up to 9,476,700 Series B preferred shares, aggregate value $60 million, exercise price one cent. That is 6.97 percent of the guaranteed principal, or about $300,000 per megawatt on a 200 MW building. There are also contingent default warrants that issue if Nscale defaults on a lease NVIDIA has guaranteed, which is the part to read twice.
Ward County is 200 MW and would not normally appear here. It appears because the guaranty rate is a comp, and because the same filing publishes the portfolio table. Of Nscale's seventeen active and contracted sites, nine are colocation, sized 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30 and 40 MW. That is 165 MW across nine leases, an 18.3 MW average. The company raising billions on gigawatt narrative is executing most of its site count in this band.
The structure showed up again three days later without a price. Kodiak Gas Services announced a six-year, 76 MW behind-the-meter supply agreement with an unnamed West Texas operator, roughly 40 reciprocating gas units, deploying in Q4 and scaling into Q1 2027. The credit language in the release is the story: the operator "is contracted with an investment-grade-rated hyperscaler and has a GPU designer as guarantor of the data center lease." Kodiak does not name the guarantor and neither will I. But a chip vendor standing behind a 76 MW colo lease is now a template rather than an anecdote, and Nscale just told you what one of those signatures goes for.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Nscale Ltd (S-1 filed Sept 18); guarantor NVIDIA · Site: Ward County, TX — municipality and mileage n/d in the filing · Footprint: n/d — Nscale discloses no square footage for any site · Load: 200 MW-IT leased (density not computable) · Lease: net lease, term and escalator n/d; NVIDIA guaranty capped at $860,340,000 · Guaranty price: $60M in penny warrants = 6.97% of guaranteed principal, ~$300k/MW · Portfolio comp: nine colo sites totaling 165 MW, 18.3 MW average · Source: SEC S-1. Kodiak: 76 MW, 6-yr behind-the-meter supply, ~40 recip units, IG hyperscaler tenant, GPU-designer lease guarantor unnamed, value n/d · Source: Kodiak IR.
Fifteen Years, Two Five-Year Options, and Not One Megawatt Reconfirmed
Blockfusion's North East Data subsidiary signed a definitive anchor lease with CoreWeave at its Niagara Falls campus on Sept 16, converting a letter of intent from June 30. Fifteen-year initial term, two five-year renewal options, a converted decommissioned power plant inside the city limits, NYISO Zone A hydro, Avison Young on the leasing side, Jones Day and Phillips Lytle on the papers. A clean announcement.
It is what is missing that should interest you. The June LOI carried 85 MW of guaranteed take-or-pay inside an up-to-300 MW envelope and a $2.8 billion fifteen-year revenue estimate. The Sept 16 definitive-lease release restated none of it. The company says terms will appear in an amended Form S-4 — it is merging into Blue Acquisition Corp. When a SPAC-bound landlord goes quiet on capacity at the exact moment the capacity becomes contractual, that is the number to chase, and Blockspace flagged it before anyone else did.
If the June figures survive into the S-4, the implied rent is roughly $183 a kilowatt-month — $2.8B over 85 MW over fifteen years. That would sit above Host's $170 on a longer term with a weaker tenant credit, which is either a hydro premium or a number that is about to change. The expansion tranche, for its part, is conditional on Blockfusion procuring firm power and CoreWeave approving the power infrastructure plan. CoreWeave can withhold. Read the envelope as an option, not a pipeline.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Blockfusion USA via North East Data LLC, merging into Blue Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: BACC) · Tenant: CoreWeave, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWV), public, non-investment-grade · Site: within the City of Niagara Falls limits, Niagara County, NY; converted decommissioned power plant, NYISO Zone A; street address n/d · Footprint: n/d · Load: 85 MW take-or-pay per the June 30 LOI, not reaffirmed at signing; up-to-300 MW campus envelope; density not computable · Lease: 15-yr initial plus two 5-yr options; escalator n/d; separate Expansion Agreement conditioned on firm power and tenant approval · Deal value: ~$2.8B base term / ~$5.4B all options — June LOI estimate only · Source: Blockfusion release.
Soluna Sized the Next Fifty Megawatts to Miss the Queue
Soluna furnished an 8-K on Sept 14 disclosing a load interconnection request for an additional 50 MW at Project Dorothy in Briscoe County, behind the meter at the 150 MW Briscoe Wind Farm it bought in April. Dorothy 1 and 2 are 98 MW energized. The sentence that matters says the new request falls below the large-load threshold and the provider is studying it directly.
That threshold is 75 MW. Below it, you get a direct study. At or above it, you join a queue that held more than 438,000 MW of requests as of mid-year, roughly 90 percent of it data centers. Soluna is the second public company in ten days to disclose in a filing that it sized a project under that line on purpose; AIB used nearly identical language about its own sub-75 MW site the same week. This is no longer a preference. It is a design constraint that shows up in the engineering before it shows up in the pro forma, and it is the single best argument for why the 5-to-75 MW band is where paper is actually getting signed.
Deal specs. Sponsor: Soluna Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLNH) · Site: Project Dorothy, Briscoe County, TX (Texas Panhandle), behind the meter at the 150 MW Briscoe Wind Farm; miles to nearest city limits n/d · Footprint: n/d · Load: 98 MW energized across Dorothy 1 and 2; +50 MW requested, below the 75 MW large-load threshold, under direct study; density n/d · Lease: n/a — interconnection request, not a lease; no tenant, term or escalator disclosed · Portfolio: 266 MW across Dorothy and Kati; the 100 MW Dorothy campus conditionally classified Base Load · Source: Form 8-K, Ex. 99.1.
One Megawatt Under Hyperscale, and Now It's in Superior Court
Statesboro amended its Unified Development Code on June 2 to permit smaller edge data centers in its office district while prohibiting hyperscale ones. On Aug 18, roughly ten weeks later, the mayor and council voted 3-2 to rezone almost 27 acres at 6539 Burkhalter Road from R-4 high-density residential to O, office and business. The plans 4am Development submitted describe a 99 MW project.
Eleven residents and Coastal Communities United have now petitioned Bulloch County Superior Court to void the rezoning, naming both the city and 4am Development. Their argument is arithmetic: the ordinance bans hyperscale, the project sits one megawatt under the threshold, and a code amendment adopted a month before the application arrived does not look accidental from the cheap seats.
I have not seen a case before that turns on where the numerical boundary of "edge" sits in a municipal code. If a Georgia court puts a defensible line at 100 MW, every ordinance drafted on that template — and they are being drafted everywhere right now — becomes a hard cap rather than an aspiration. Which, for a developer who has spent the last year arguing that 40 MW is a neighbor and 400 MW is a land use, is not the worst outcome available.
Deal specs. Sponsor: 4am Development, LLC · Site: 6539 Burkhalter Road, within Statesboro city limits, Bulloch County, GA; ~26.5 acres · Footprint: n/d · Load: 99 MW per plans submitted by the developer, as characterized in the petition; density not computable · Lease: n/a — land-use entitlement; no tenant, term or value disclosed · Entitlement: R-4 to O; UDC amended June 2, 2026; Planning Commission 5-1 on Aug 4; Mayor and Council 3-2 on Aug 18; petition to void filed in Bulloch County Superior Court · Source: Statesboro Herald.
What to Watch Next Week
Host Digital's Tulsa closing, on or before Sept 26. The 8-K puts the $27.7 million building acquisition on a deadline at the end of this week. If it slips, the 43 MW lease and the investment-grade backstop are both sitting on an option rather than a deed.
Blockfusion's amended Form S-4, no date given. The company has said the anchor lease and Expansion Agreement terms go in the amendment — capacity, take-or-pay quantum, escalator, security. It is the highest-value document in the pipeline and it will either confirm the $183 a kilowatt-month or blow it up.
Loudoun County's pause resolution, no date announced. The board voted 7-1 on Sept 15 to direct staff to draft a twelve-month halt on legislative data center applications. It only directed the drafting. Until the board adopts the resolution itself, nothing is frozen and the Dillon's Rule workaround is untested.
Lawrence, Kansas, next city commission cycle. The planning commission voted 6-1 on Sept 21 to move data centers from by-right to special use permit, a regime that outlives the city's two-year moratorium. The dissent objected that the amendment cannot tell a 20 MW inference site from a hyperscale campus. Watch whether anyone writes a megawatt threshold in before adoption.
Indianapolis MDC, Oct 21. The Metrobloks abatement hearings resume, delayed from Sept 16. First test of whether the 60-percent-over-ten-years real estate and 90-percent-over-fifteen equipment template the commission gave Sabey holds a second time inside a county that has otherwise banned new data centers through 2027.
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.
