October 16, 2025
The Union League ClubNew York, NYPreliminary Agenda Topics
Provisional Start & End Times:
October 16th: 8:00am-6:00pm
General Themes
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An Introduction To PE In The Data Center Industry (virtual-October 6, 11:30est)
- Are data center investments private equity cash flow deals, real estate investments, or infrastructure deals?
- Where do good assets go for financing?
- Seeing project finance models utilized, securitized (ABS/CMBS) financings
- Power availability’s impact on underwriting
- Has the time come for secondary markets?
- Supply chain challenges and impact
- Where is the money coming from and what’s the difference
- Demand dynamics
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Economy/Demand Drivers: Can The Challenging Global Economic Environment Deter The Hockey Stick Growth?
- AI & Power Are #1 & #2 What Else Is On Top Of The List?
- Supply chain bottleneck and infrastructure constraints
- Impact of the ending of remote work and DOGE? Will other demand drivers make up for the negatives?
- AI and compute demand vs. The fallout of deep seek, 9 months later
- The power supply arms race: At what point do data centers get kicked off the grid?
- How are the politics and NIMBY looking?
- How big is big? How big is big in 10 years?
- How much are costs going up?
- Different sub-markets and data center markets going forward
- Investment and M&A trends
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Key Valuation Metrics & Benchmarks For The Individual Property, Company & Deal
- Do you expect multiples to remain high?
- Valuing properties that are future-proofed for higher density servers and other critical developments
- Colo vs. hyperscale
- Lease term and lessee evaluation
- Impact of rising cost of insurance
- Does sustainability impact valuation?
- How are all the mega data centers impacting smaller centers’ valuation?
- JV vs. property vs. company valuation
- Where will value be in ’26?
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The Future Is Now: Picking Markets & Designing Your Data Center While Preparing For Disruptions & Risks
- Cool cooling, Chips as a service and AI infrastructure advances including clusters that are going to change the market… How are these developments impacting how and where you are building?
- How are you future-proofing your data centers? How much does it cost to put the brakes on a design to future-proof?
- Building your next data center: What are the key factors to decide what will be important 5 years from now?
- The Return of the Jedi vs. and the return of 3 Mile Island: Where are we with nuclear power for data centers?
- Should you be preparing for quantum computing?
- Tier 3 markets and personnel… Are we going to be remoting in?
- Sustainability: A key to getting past the NIMBY crowd?
- How big can we get? How much supply is too much supply?
- BYOP, energy contracting and future efficiencies
- Regional power dynamics, emerging hubs and which tier two markets are going to perform #1?
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Hyperscale Deep Dive: Will The Demand & Market Growth Continue?
- What is the growth of this part of the market? Financial strength? New money coming in?
- AI-Driven demand factors and technological evolution
- Hyperscale as sole tenant: How are you managing risk?
- Capital expenditure trends Are you looking to self-build?
- What is your power strategy?
- Using PE: Strategic partnerships and the rest of the capital stack
- What is your exit strategy?
- Consolidation trends and the M&A landscape
- Mega campus strategy
- If I had a billion dollars…
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Senior Large PE Player Corporate Strategy Plenary: How Are You Approaching The Historically High Valuations? (non-moderator slots PE supplier only)
- Comparing different models, markets, exits
- Geographic focus: Tier 1 locations versus emerging markets? What about alternative power-independent sites?
- Investment preference: Chasing hyperscale giants or focusing on mid-sized 10-20MW facilities or the reliable enterprise colocation segment?
- Strategic approaches: Full platform acquisitions vs. joint ventures vs. standalone investments
- Capital allocation toward companies providing services to data center operators
- Critical factors for market dominance and competitive advantage
- Which alternative real estate asset classes are currently attracting your attention?
- Land vs. powered land vs. powered shell vs. turnkey: Which strategy are you pursuing?
- Your equity investors as more and 4x the funds focus on this area
- Getting involved in facilities that would like to expand
- To what extent does your team engage in operational management details?
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PE Users Senior Data Center Owner Panel On Navigating Capital Markets To Finance Your Long-Term Vision (non-moderator slots Data Center operator only)
- Market position and strategic investment approach
- How are you derisking your projects with PE in this environment of high valuations?
- How are you financing your data center? The infrastructure?
- How are your data centers tackling AI growth?
- Power strategy
- Site selection strategies you and your partners are implementing
- What was the last disagreement with your financing partners? How was it resolved?
- What does your capital stack look like? Exit strategy?
Land/Construction/Financing
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Site Selection: What Is Your Model & Criteria? Comparing Expensive Primary Markets, Secondary And Edge Markets
- Power- or real estate-first approach
- What are the must haves you look for in the land? Nice to haves?
- Key infrastructure needs
- Do you build on spec regarding getting power and zoning?
- NIMBY market strategy and regulatory navigation
- Lowest cost markets for when latency is/isn’t important
- What is the latest on your due diligence punch list?
- Got the power, need to add the fiber: When would you proceed?
- Power options and cost
- 3rd tier markets and the labor problems
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Buying & Entitling Land: AI Computer Clusters, Powered Land Assemblages & Edge-First Development Developments
- The keys to securing power, entitlements, local regulations & other site prep
- How are land prices looking?
- How long is entitlement in major markets taking? Other pre-development work?
- Are you spec building?
- How are you finding power? What kind of timing buffer are you building in?
- On sight power: How long to get it together?
- Powered land assemblages: What kind of cost and time frame?
- Financing the prep work
- Your strategies to reduce your timeline, improve procurement and manage material costs
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Construction: What Are Your Strategies To Minimize Risk & Cost As Supply Chains & Tariffs Continue To Be Foggy?
- AI’s impact on design and construction
- Changing rack design
- Shell vs. full turnkey
- Power strategy: Going off-the-grid vs. procuring off-site
- Anatomy of a construction pause and what the lenders did about it?
- The coolest cooling developments
- Construction finance developments for different models
- Going spec: Making it succeed
- What do you think of prefab components?
- Rightsizing power potential: The cost vs. need of excess power
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Is There Enough Debt? … Assessing The Debt Markets As Interest Rates Remain Uncertain
- Financing shovel ready vs. construction projects
- How do debt providers underwrite the higher costs?
- Where do good assets go to finance?
- Comparing debt from real estate vs. infrastructure funds
- Credit rating and debt service ratio implications of debt
- Comparing terms of construction to perm vs. stabilized assets vs. refinancing in different markets for hyperscale vs. edge opportunities
- When to hedge
- Is the ABS market maxed out? How are the alternatives looking?
- Looking at the sale leaseback market
- Debt or equity or pref: Where is the value today for the investor vs. owner?
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Going Up & Down The Equity Part Of The Capital Stack: Finance, Exit & Structure
- Joint venture vs. straight equity vs. pref equity waterfalls, promotes and other terms
- What kind of exits exist for data centers and where do you see this market evolving the most?
- Does location matter and how do you assess the energy needs and requirements before making an investment?
- Single tenant user or multi-tenant co-location: Is there a difference in cap rates or how they are financed?
- Land and construction financing vs. stabilized acquisition
- How is oversea equity looking in this political climate? How about pension and other LP monies?
- Considering the tenant and building spec
- Equity requirements for built-to-suit vs. spec vs. stabilized vs. retrofits
- Risk-adjusted return expectations across different data center asset classes
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Optimizing Your Capital: When Does It Pay To Separate Financing The Power & IT Components?
- Financing BTM configurations
- When can you qualify for specialized energy financing programs?
- Accounting for depreciation schedules of longer term and shorter-term equipment
- Power-as-a-service approaches
- Looking for energy credits in all the wrong places? Virtual power purchase agreements
- Living with condominium structures
- Power infrastructure joint ventures
- Pipeline and other financing
- Considerations for upgrading technology
Non-Financial
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Power Generation: Build vs. Buy + Power Procurement Strategies
- Anatomy of a strategic alliance, partnership or joint venture between data center operators and electric utilities
- When is on campus the best choice?
- Clean energy practicality and dissecting the greenwashing
- What are your options if you can’t get adequate power delivered before tenant termination rights come up? Can force majeure apply?
- Looking at Tier 1 market challenges
- Examining local power market changes
- Powering AI vs. traditional data centers
- Grid/off-grid combination approaches
- Timeline for getting transformers and substations
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Power Strategy: Behind The Meter Power Generation Strategies
- Is your strategy for BYOP more for prime or backup applications?
- Bridge power vs. perm approaches
- Integrating load management: How far can software or other optimization techniques get you?
- Using generators, batteries and renewable sources: What should be the mix?
- Nuclear power beyond the 3-mile hype
- Grid parallel approaches
- Getting a major utility to help back your off-the-grid project
- Using solar and wind as more than warming coffee pots
- Which BYOP strategies are you favoring?
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Critical Lease Structures, End User Control & Operational Insights for Data Center PE Portfolio Owners
- Is your Lease financeable, and if financeable does it contain terms that adversely affect your interest?
- Yield on cost/powered shell deals: What’s appropriate to be included in costs?
- Purchase options and tenant transfers : when can they be exercised and at what price?
- Landlord guaranties: what’s being guaranteed and what is the necessary credit for that landlord guarantor?
- Powered shell vs. turnkey landlord vs. NNN leases and their cap X and operational responsibility
- Force majeure: SLAs, equipment and power procurement delays
- In colocation leases are you seeing any free rent?
- Service level agreements vs. controlling things out of control
- New, untraditional tenants like GPU, high-performance computing and quantum computing as a service providers, AI model training specialists and edge infrastructure providers
- New technical, infrastructure, operational, risk management and compliance factors to consider in this market
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Together, Forever And Never Apart: How Tied Together Are AI Demand And Data Center Investments
- Risk management and what are the risks of investing in a large AI data center in a tertiary market compared to a primary market? Remember the dot.com bust… How are you protecting yourself against the AI market cratering and market saturation?
- The latest end user requirements for AI-driven data centers
- Will data center clusters be the dominant force shaping campuses?
- Financing, valuing and structuring the AI data center vs. others
- Capital deployment timelines
- Deep seek update, AI inference computing and Chip SAS: How are they changing the data center industry? How is the rest of the AI market evolving and how will that be impacting all facets of the industry?
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Looking Out The Window… The California Data Center Market
- 500 MW projects: How are they being handled from a power perspective?
- What would you look to happen in the California markets to increase your new data center builds in California?
- What are some local markets you are looking at that would be a California substitute?
- Best ways to limit local development costs and NIMBY opposition when doing business locally
- PGE’s proposed electric rule 30 and other legislative updates
- The latest power demand growth predictions