Cool Vector

A widening gap is developing between the data center industry's stated sustainability ambitions and the harsh operational reality of an AI-driven power grab, say four digital infrastructure veterans. This episode of Cool Vector includes commentary from Miranda Gardiner, Executive Director of the iMasons Climate Accord, Wannie Park, CEO of PADO (an LG Nova-backed company), Nabeel Mahmood, data cent...

Two recent MIT graduations have launched “the S&P 500 for compute” in order to allow digital infrastructure market participants to better hedge against price fluctuations.  Having graduated last year, Kush Bavaria, Co-Founder and CEO, and Wayne Nelms, Co-Founder and CTO, launched ORNN as an index fund for components necessary for compute fed into the infrastructure. Nelms spoke with Cool Vecto...

Suffice it to say that Richard Lukaj has been busy - the Co-Founder of digital-infrastructure focused investment bank Bank Street has advised on a torrent of transcations accross data centers and fiber networks, and says the deal pace and complexity is such that "most of 2026 is spoken for." Speaking at a Bank Street networking event in Honolulu, Hawaii, during PTC 2026, Lukaj shares with Cool Vec...

Is a zero-emission, gigawatt data center possible? The CEO of EdgeCloudLink says yes, but only if developers are capable of substituting hydrogen for natural gas as a source of energy. Speaking on the sidelines of the DCD New York event in March, Bachar tells Cool Vector his company already runs a zero-emission data center in Mountain View, California. The success gave ECL and partners the ambitio...

Hyperscalers increasingly will realize they don’t need mega data centers, which, by the way,  are becoming targets in military conflicts, according to industry veteran Tony Grayson. As the former President of Compass Datacenters and then Northstar Enterprise and defense, Grayson has long been at the forefront of modular data centers that serve the edge compute needs of the digital infrastructure l...

When a self-proclaimed data center developer claims to have a gigawatt of power secured, the proper response in far too many cases is, "No, you don't," says Mark McComiskey, Founding Partner of AVAIO Digital. Speaking with Cool Vector on the sidelines of the PTC 2026 event in Honolulu, McComiskey gives an overview of the resource and talent advantages possessed by AVAIO, and explains how the elect...

The Cool Vector editorial team welcomes Ted Manvitz, Managing Director and Head of International Investments at Grain Management, for a wide ranging conversation about digital infrastructure investing in non-US markets, as well as Manvitz’s professional history of investing in asset around the world. Also gathered for the episode are Hadassa Lutz, a Partner at Cloud2Ground, Phillip Koblence, CEO o...

Hunter Newby is making a big bet on internet exchange points in underserved mid-sized American cities. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, the founder of Newby Ventures says he predicts the same infrastructure model that proved highly profitable in tier-one markets over the past 25 years will generate recurring, high-margin returns in lower-tiered regions when they finally come online. K...

The case for Spain as an emerging AI infrastructure hub is made by Gabriel Nebreda Molinero, CEO of Nostrum Group, on the sidelines of the 2026 Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu. Spain is uniquely positioned at the intersection of continents, Nebreda tells Cool Vector. The market has abundant renewable energy, extensive fiber coverage, and 30 submarine cables connecting it to the Amer...

The largest data center projects have a huge debt advantage, as well as a potential exti disadvantage, says John Day, Chief Commercial Officer of CleanArc Data Centers. Speaking with Cool Vector on the sidelines of the 2026 Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu, Day shares front-line market intelligence about the debt “hiccup” in the digital infrastructure market favoring projects with in...

Data center batteries are no longer simply "backup insurance" for power disruptions, and are now a core part of digital infrastructure allowing efficient use of energy as well as unbroken uptime, say Brandon Smith, VP of Global Sales and Product at ZincFive and Nabeel Mahmood, a longtime data center operator and now the co-founder of Nomad Futurist Institute.  This episode of Cool Vector dives dee...

When Mike Armstrong first joined GI Partners in 2014, digital infrastructure assets that went up for auction would attract maybe five bidders. Fast forward to today's heated market, and Armstrong says between 20 to 30 bidders compete for assets in a sale process. Armstrong, a Managing Director and Head of Technology and Science Investments,  tells Cool Vector there are positives to the increased c...

Towers are the digital infrastructure that make modern connectivity possible. As demand for wireless connectivity surges, towers are becoming more valuable, while at the same time an increasing number of “gadgets” are being added to tower sites to serve the needs of proliferating digitally-enabled services. In this episode of Cool Vector, David Snow chatted with Omar Jaffrey, Founder and Managing...

GPUs versus TPUs, depreciating GPUs and data centers that may never be built - Cool Vector experts take you inside the issues causing the most uncertainty in the global data center market. A year ago, TD Cowan's Michael Elias roiled the data center world when he reported Microsoft was pulling back from some of its projects. Today, a "winner take most" urgency continues to drive the market, but hyp...

The future of the digital infrastructure asset class can be seen in the history of the real estate asset class, experts from PREA and Five Point Infrastructure tell Cool Vector.  A mountain of institutional capital is eyeing data centers, but investors - including US pension funds - can often spend years studying a new asset class before beginning to allocate to it. Real estate is a good example o...

Energy Capital Partners, among the most dominant energy players in the global data center market, now sees an upside potential to its many power-plant sites that did not exist during decades of zero-growth in the electricity markets, says Andrew Gilbert, a Partner at ECP.  Gilbert recently sat for an interview with Cool Vector, during which he described ECP's response the surging demand for energy...

While at Google, where he led data center acquisitions across North America, Raj Vohra learned "we're just scratching the surface of what the world needs for compute capacity," says Vohra, now the head of data center investing for Thor Equities. "We'll see evolutions of different product types," Vorha tells Cool Vector in a wide-ranging interview. "There's going to be a lot of demand in a lot of d...

Agentic AI is driving the use of modular data centers, according to Tony Grayson, former President of Compass Datacenters, and now President and General Manager of Northstar Federal and Northstar Enterprise & Defense, where he has innovated modular data centers designed to bring flexibility and efficiency to a market in which technology evolves faster than traditional large-scale data centers...

Two of the world's biggest digital infrastructure investors - EQT and DigitalBridge - are bullish about fiber networks, and tell Cool Vector why.   The long-term bet on fiber began in 2019, when EQT and DigitalBridge jointly took Zayo private in a $14 billion transaction. In March 2025, the group announced another wave of investment - Zayo's acquisition of Crown Castle's fiber solutions business f...

The moment its construction begins, a new data center becomes an old data center, given how fast technology and use-cases are evolving. Retrofitting an existing data center is the only way to save it from obsolescence. But retrofits are more difficult than you might imagine, a panel of experts tell Cool Vector. This episode of Cool Vector includes Bo Bond, Vice Chair of Cushman & Wakefield, Br...

Despite its relatively small size, Ireland is a heavyweight among global data center hubs. But that advantaged position has been thrown into doubt amid political gridlock.  In this episode of Cool Vector, four Irish data center veterans explain why Ireland's continued leadership in data infrastructure will require close cooperation between government and industry, as well as awareness among the ge...

The future of the data center industry is being shaped by a use-case pivot among crypto miners, as well as by energy innovations within the crypto industry that make compute more efficient, say two Macquarie Group analysts.  In an interview with Cool Vector, Macquarie senior equities analyst Paul Golding and Charles Yonts, Head of Sustainability Research for Asia at Macquarie, describe the recent...

Power constraints in major European data center hubs is driving investment to second-tier markets like Berlin, Madrid and Manchester, says Zahl Limbuwala, Operating Partner at Germany-based investment firm DTCP .  In a Cool Vector interview, Limbuwala explains the evolved landscape for data center investing across Europe, and stresses that knowledge of individual market regulations is critical for...

CapitaLand is building four major data centers in India, taking advantage of what Managing Director Surajit Chatterjee describes as a huge population underserved by digital infrastructure, a supportive government and keen hyperscaler interest in the country.  In an interview with Cool Vector, Chatterjee details the thesis behind CapitaLand's data center strategy in India as well as the macro condi...

There is a greenfield development boom in the data center market, and the capital markets for digital infrastructure have rapidly evolved to keep up, drawing attention to risk factors of the many data centers already up and running, says the head of RBC Capital Market 's influential data center advisory business. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Shivek Ratnasamy paints the picture of...