PowerUp 2026: The Money Is Ready. Power Is What Gets Underwritten.
This week bankers, credit funds, infrastructure investors, lawyers and power developers met in McLean, Virginia, for PowerUp Data Centers — Investment, Infocast’s summit on funding the energy and AI build-out. We sat in on the public sessions. Below are our notes from four of them, and our read on what they mean. Figures are as stated by the speakers.
The “old world” and the “new world” of data center finance
The opening finance panel — Akin, Green Street, DC Advisory, Investec and Bank of America — framed the shift simply. In the old world, the utility committed megawatts by a date, construction risk was modest, and lenders financed data centers at very high leverage. In the new world, the utility increasingly cannot deliver on time, so developers build their own generation — and inherit permitting, fuel, equipment and operating risk that lenders now price in.
Banks are responding by pulling data center finance into a single desk and blending two traditions: from real estate, completion guarantees and interest-only periods; from project finance, single-purpose vehicles and amortization to the end of the lease. Panelists described a market that is splitting in two — projects with confirmed power and a strong tenant can get almost anything, while smaller projects without firm power struggle to get financed at all.
Confirmed, deliverable power is the most financeable thing in this market. Everything else — land, buildings, even tenants — is priced off it.
On-site generation: from stopgap to design basis
The off-grid panel — Wilson Sonsini, Continuum Associates, VoltaGrid, Bloom Energy, Stella Power and ERock — traced how on-site power went from fashionable, to unwanted, to a bridge until the grid arrives, to something a growing number of campuses are now designed around under 10- to 15-year contracts. A Bloom Energy executive cited the company’s own survey of roughly 200 respondents: about 60% of data centers are exploring on-site generation.
The economics explain why. By the same speaker’s estimate, one extra year of operations is worth the equivalent of 5–10 cents per kilowatt-hour over a 10-year contract, and power is only about 7% of a data center’s total cost — so a few months of delay costs far more than a higher power price. Financing the power plant is its own discipline: lenders want an investment-grade offtaker or meaningful credit support, and payments that continue whether or not the data center is ready on time.
Speed to power has become a hard number, not a slogan. The winning sites will be the ones that can show a credible path to energization — grid, on-site or both — and a counterparty a lender can underwrite.
“It’s going to take a village” to fund the build-out
The capital-stack panel — McDermott Will & Schulte, Copia Power, GIP/BlackRock, I Squared Capital and EIG — started with scale. An I Squared Capital partner put a year of top-hyperscaler capital spending, roughly $760 billion, next to the U.S. hotel industry: the cost of roughly 3.6 million hotel rooms, against about 5.5 million rooms in the entire United States. No single pool of money covers that; panelists pointed to banks, private credit, ABS, CMBS and 144A bonds working together.
Lenders are also getting more selective. An EIG executive said dedicated power for data centers is now being financed at only a modest premium — around 25 basis points — over a conventional grid-connected data center, at leverage near 85% of cost. Others stressed that “power infrastructure” covers half a dozen sub-classes, each with its own risk, and that lenders to generation built around a single tenant have to take a view on re-leasing risk and residual value once the first lease ends.
The capital exists — the filter is quality. Lenders are learning to tell real power, real permits and real counterparties from a pitch, and they are pricing accordingly.
Buyers pay in full only for what is secured
The closing panel, on mergers, acquisitions and exit strategies, described a market in which much of the value now changes hands before anything is built — at the land, power and permitting stage. Panelists said buyers pay full value for what is contracted or secured and only partial value for the rest — and that diligence runs through the same pillars every time: full site control, environmental review, permits, taxes, a path to interconnection and a path to offtake. Going to market too early, one speaker warned, forces a seller to disclose everything it does not yet know.
Time has a price tag. One panelist described a Texas project where the difference between waiting for a utility substation in 2028 and building one sooner was worth about $200,000 per megawatt. Another noted that an option on land typically costs a small fraction of a project’s total spend — cheap insurance on a scarce site.
The exit is built long before the sale. Every item that moves from “expected” to “signed” shifts value out of the buyer’s discount and into the seller’s price.
Four panels, one signal: money for AI infrastructure is abundant, but it flows to projects where power is firm, permitted and financeable — and it charges everyone else for the uncertainty. That is where Moiseus looks.
This material is for general informational purposes only. It is market commentary and reflects our own views. Observations are drawn from public sessions at PowerUp Data Centers — Investment 2026; figures and statements are as presented by the speakers and have not been independently verified. Mention of an organization or speaker does not imply any relationship with, or endorsement of, Moiseus Capital. This is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, and it is not investment advice. Moiseus Capital Corp is not currently offering securities. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.