Cool Vector

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...

How will the tariff imbroglio impact data center development in the US, which relies heavily on imported components? Cool Vector convened a panel of experts, including the CFO of a major data center company, to compare notes on supply chain disruptions, critical equipment and what happens to compute demand in economic downturns. This episode of Cool Vector Hot Takes features a lively conversation...

The private equity firm that created ⁠ Digital Realty ⁠sees a "wealth of opportunities" in digital infrastructure, but avoids hyperscaler mega-projects, says Mark Prybutok, a Managing Director at ⁠ GI Partners ⁠ and Head of the Data Infrastructure strategy. In 2001, GI Partners made its very first investment as a firm in a portfolio of distressed data centers reeling from the dotcom crash. In 2004...

The launch of a new data center 'pod' business is being met with surging customer demand, highlighting the need for edge digital infrastructure in remote areas, according to the leadership of Duos Edge AI.  In an extensive interview with Cool Vector,  Doug Recker, President of Duos Edge AI, and Adrian Goldfarb, CFO of parent company Duos Technologies Group, describe how edge data centers offer an...

Interest in ETA careers is rising "exponentially" among MBA candidates at what is widely regarded as the intellectual birthplace of Entrepreneurship-Through-Acquisition, according to three leaders of the Stanford Graduate School of Business' ETA club. In a joint interview with Search Party, president Michelle Nguyen and vice presidents Ruby Au and Laura Kiehl share details of the club's mission to...

How is it that Denmark, with a population of 6 million, has become a major nexus for sustainable data centers? Cool Vector convened a lively, in-depth conversation with CEOs from Digital Realty, atNorth and Danish Datacenter Industrien to learn the country's formula for public-private collaboration and digital infrastructure success.  Joining the conversation are Pernille Hoffmann, CEO of Digital...

Data center investment strategies that focus on ground-up development in unconventional locations are more complex, and therefore more likely to generate stronger returns, says Mark McComiskey, a partner at AVAIO Capital . In an extensive conversation with Cool Vector, McComiskey explains that many private capital firms active in digital infrastructure invest in existing assets, or compete for sit...

This episode of Cool Vector Hot Takes tackles four hot topics in the global digital infrastructure market: 1) Has Microsoft been oversupplied data centers? 2) Inside the plan for Southeast Asia’s largest data center 3) Real estate investor love for data centers keeps rising 4) Blackstone’s low-carbon power move in Virginia’s data center alley. This round, the Cool Vector editorial team of David Sn...

Infranity's ambitions to become a global player in the infrastructure debt market have advanced with the establishment of a US office. Cool Vector caught up with two Infranity partners to learn about the sustainable lending opportunity in North America, the risk-reward profile of co-location data centers and the limits of the energy transition.  Infranity, based in Paris, launched seven years ago...

A shortage of construction workers with skills specific to data centers is hindering the growth of digital infrastructure, says Amazon Web Service's former Worldwide Head of Engineering, Construction and Real Estate. In a wide-ranging Cool Vector interview, Sandra Benson, now Vice President of Industry Transformation at Procore Technologies, says of the global race to construct data centers: “ We...

In his 35 years in the power business, ⁠EnCap Investment⁠'s James Hughes has never seen a market as "strange" as the current one, driven by data center inelastic demand as well as industrial projects across the US.  Hughes is a Managing Partner and head of the EnCap's energy transition business, which last May raised a $1.5 billion fund to invest in power, low-carbon fuels and carbon management. I...

The NEW Episode of Cool Vector delves into the sudden rise of DeepSeek, NVIDIA’s share swoon, the implications of overbuilding in the data center space, Stargate’s shock-and-awe, $500 billion digital infra announcement, tough sledding in the private capital markets, and why Phil, Nabeel and David enjoy the topic of data centers so much.    In “Cool Vector Hot Takes,” Phillip Koblence, Nabeel Mahmo...