A space and satellite communications company used off-balance-sheet debt to buy chips at scale, moving the funding of artificial intelligence infrastructure from equity markets into credit markets. In the same statement, the warning about a coming shakeout showed that the fragility of that leverage cycle is already visible to the man who set it in motion.
Google announced a partnership with electricity services provider Voltus to develop a one-gigawatt virtual power plant in the PJM grid region. The logic inverts the usual expansion path: data centres are being built faster than the grid can expand, so the company is funding existing users to cut consumption at peak times, aggregating dispersed demand-side flexibility into a dispatchable resource that buys time in the interconnection queue.
The artificial-intelligence-driven data centre investment boom is showing its first clear signs of cooling. HSBC chief executive Georges Elhedery said AI is a transformative technology worth investing in, but that investors must be selective in the infrastructure underpinning it, focusing on the quality of tenancy agreements and contract pricing rather than assuming every project is sound. At the same time, South Korean data centre builder Elice fell about 30% on its trading debut, a signal that investors are repricing the sustainability of the compute build-out.