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 sites in overheated hubs like Northern Virginia. By contrast, AVAIO is simultaneously developing six si...
Mar 10, 2025•38 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Snow, Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood is joined by Obinna Isiadinso, Global Sector Lead for Data C...
Feb 28, 2025•27 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast 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 in partnership with Italian insurer and asset manager Generali. The firm has a mandate to lend to the...
Feb 18, 2025•16 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast 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 literally can't build fast enough. The biggest reason we can't is we don't have the labor to build f...
Feb 06, 2025•17 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast 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. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Hughes says hyperscaler demand for data centers has crea...
Feb 03, 2025•26 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Mahmood, and David Snow engage in a lively, irreverent conversation, drawing on decades of experience in the...
Jan 30, 2025•34 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast Ardian's very first investment in a data center company shows it is "quite convinced on the AI opportunity in Europe," says Pauline Thomson, Head of Data Science and a Managing Director at the $176 billion investment firm Ardian . In a Cool Vector interview, Thomson describers the thesis behind Ardian's $1.2 billion investment in Verne, an Iceland-based, green data center company with pan-Nordic growth plans. She notes that Iceland is the "only country in the world powered by 100% renewable e...
Jan 28, 2025•19 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast The data center industry is uniquely positioned to integrate workers from a broad array of backgrounds, which is good news, given the rapid aging of the industry's original workforce. According to three veterans of the industry, more needs to be done to elevate awareness of careers in data centers among workers in other industries, as well as among young people raised in a digital world, but unaware of the physical infrastructure necessary to keep the data flowing. This wide-ranging Cool Vector ...
Jan 15, 2025•33 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast David Capobianco's company, LandBridge , owns 270,000 surface acres in West Texas, and he's pleased to explain why the land's profitability has tripled in three years. The reason has to do with data centers. LandBridge is a publicly traded affiliate of Five Point Energy, of which Capobianco is CEO. The company's share price is being carefully watched by investors looking for evidence of a new paradigm in land ownership. Acreage once used primarily for ranching or energy extraction in the Permi...
Dec 19, 2024•32 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Private equity firm Actis is building data centers around the world while maintaining strict standards around sustainable energy, water and social impact. And the firm's impact is about to get bigger. Actis and General Atlantic recently merged to create an $87 billion investment platform, with Actis focused on the huge opportunity in sustainable infrastructure, largely in growth markets across Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Digital infrastructure is a significant part of the i...
Dec 17, 2024•36 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Data center real estate investment trusts (REITs), like Equinix and Digital Realty Trust, differ from traditional REITs in their higher operational intensity and reliance on artificial-intelligence tailwinds for growth, says Harold Chen, Director of Commercial Real Estate at Fitch Ratings . Chen, whose team has assigned investment-grade ratings to Equinix and Digital Realty, says the companies benefit from surging demand related to AI. Of the two, Digital Realty has a higher concentration of hyp...
Dec 05, 2024•14 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast "I kid you not. . . at least once a week, I've got a conversation going with somebody who sits in digital infrastructure private equity, and they say to me, 'If you know somebody, or a team, that does XYZ in the data center space, let me know. I'd love to meet them, because that is the type of business model that we could put hundreds of millions, if not not billions, into.'" The amount of private capital available for deployment in digital infrastructure investments is far outpacing the supply ...
Nov 21, 2024•33 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast Partners Group was already bullish on AI when, in 2022, the firm invested $1.2 billion in EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure. Then the debut of ChatGPT a few weeks later blew to lid off their initial assumptions of growth. In the post-ChatGPT world, the hyperscaler market served by EdgeCore saw an "explosion of demand for capacity," says Diffendal who, in a wide-ranging interview, explains the criticality of strong management in responding to the unexpectedly strong leasing activity. Two years late...
Nov 15, 2024•23 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast A conversation with Omar Jaffrey, founder of digital infrastructure private capital firm Palistar Capital , which is currently investing from a $1.9 billion fund. Jaffrey gives a grand tour through the digital infrastructure investment opportunity, in which he says builders of scale will have advantages in winning customers. He cautions that some investors confuse the full stack of technology, services and human capital involved in the telecommunications industry with core infrastructure, the ...
Oct 29, 2024•34 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast John Siegel, a Partner at private equity firm Columbia Capital, offers a deep dive into the physical assets necessary to power an AI-driven internet, including the fiber optic cables that connect the growing population of data centers around the world, and the nations jockeying for position to build digital infrastructure hubs. In a wide-ranging conversation, John shares his views on the demand drivers of information sharing, including not only AI but the massive proliferation of devices that co...
Sep 26, 2024•52 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Digital infrastructure has a voracious appetite for energy, but the electric utility industry is filled with apprehension and lacks 'muscle memory' to 'build big things,' according to Brian Janous, co-founder of sustainable energy specialist Cloverleaf Infrastructure, as well as the former head of data center energy for Microsoft. In a wide-ranging interview with Cool Vector, Janous describes how his mandate at Microsoft went from relative obscurity to a top-order concern among the company's lea...
Sep 18, 2024•36 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Financial journalist David Snow introduces Cool Vector, a new video-podcast that will chart the rise of data centers and the digital infrastructure asset class. On a regular basis, Cool Vector will convene expert conversations about the role that institutional investment capital will play in the build-out of digital infrastructure around the world, and focus on the overlapping long-term trends of digitalization, the rise of private capital, changing energy demand, changing land and real estate u...
Aug 21, 2024•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
