“If you’re a vendor and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, you want to capture the growth,” he says. Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research, agrees. “Cisco, Arista, Juniper and those companies that build data center equipment, make no mistake, their resources are directed towards AI first because they want to be part of those big buildouts,” he says. “There’s a lot of money being poured into neoclouds, things like that. They’ve reprioritized the resources based on where market demand is.” Price hikes, long lead times, sketchy support The repercussions for companies with traditional data centers include higher prices, long lead times, and perhaps subpar support. Gartner predicts switch price increases of 15% to 40%, largely the result of resource constraints, and lead times of three to nine months, up from one to two months in mid-2025. Constraints should ease by around the middle of next year, but don’t expect prices to come down. “Generally speaking, vendors have no consistent track record of reducing prices in these networking markets,” Lerner says. At the same time, with vendors dedicating scarce engineering talent to AI, they likely won’t invest in significant innovations for non-AI switch families. The same goes for support.

In the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. government made one point unmistakable. Washington wants more data center capacity, more AI infrastructure, and more domestic power. But it no longer views these projects as conventional commercial real estate. Across the White House, DOE, FERC, EPA, EIA, and the federal permitting apparatus, data centers are now being treated as strategic infrastructure. That designation brings tangible support in the form of faster permitting, access to federal land, and a more explicit embrace of large-scale power development. It also comes with conditions: stricter expectations around who funds transmission upgrades, who provides new generation, how water is managed, and how much operational data operators must disclose. This is the new federal posture: accelerate the buildout, but impose discipline on its consequences. Washington is not pulling back in the face of local opposition. It is pushing forward, while making clear that the next phase of data center growth must carry its own infrastructure burden. Who Will Pay? The question is no longer whether the United States will support the next wave of hyperscale and AI campus construction. The question is under what terms, and whether utilities, communities, and ratepayers will be asked to subsidize it. The outcome of that debate will be set less by local politics than by the federal rules now taking shape. The clearest signal came on March 4, when President Trump announced the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.” Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI committed to “build, bring, or buy” new generation for their data centers and to fund the full cost of required grid and transmission upgrades. The administration also said those companies would coordinate with grid operators to provide backup generation in emergencies. The message was direct: data centers can grow, but the costs and reliability risks tied to

The Model Behind the Lease Applied Digital is packaging a full development solution for AI infrastructure: site, utility access, power distribution, cooling systems, and a financing framework capable of supporting multi-hundred-megawatt deployments. The approach reduces the integration burden on hyperscale customers and aligns delivery with the scale and timelines of AI demand. The Delta Forge 1 lease indicates that at least one major hyperscaler is willing to commit to that model on a long-term basis. The scale of the agreement reinforces that point. The lease accounts for 300 MW within a 430 MW campus, with capacity structured across two 150 MW buildings. The agreement spans two leases and includes three five-year renewal options, establishing a long-duration footprint at the site. This level of commitment effectively anchors the first phase of Delta Forge 1 and provides a clear validation of the campus’s initial buildout. Financing Follows the Lease Applied Digital paired the Delta Forge 1 tenant announcement with a financing update that underscores the link between signed demand and capital formation. The company expects to secure up to $600 million in additional funding, including a senior secured bridge facility of up to $300 million to support continued development at Polaris Forge 1, along with a $300 million revolving credit facility for development, working capital, and transaction expenses. The structure highlights how hyperscaler commitments can be translated into financing capacity across a broader platform. The Delta Forge 1 lease functions as a catalyst for the next phase of capital deployment. That momentum builds on a financing-heavy stretch. In its April 8 fiscal third-quarter results, Applied Digital disclosed a $2.15 billion private offering of 6.750% senior secured notes due 2031 to support Polaris Forge 2. The company also detailed credit enhancements tied to CoreWeave leases at Polaris Forge 1 following an investment-grade A3

Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with

However, Paul Morris, executive director of the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), which oversees the project, told the Salt Lake Tribune that it has a deal with a natural gas utility that has a pipeline running directly through the land on which the data center will be built to provide all of the power needed. “One hundred percent of the power will be generated off the Ruby Pipeline,” he said. “It will not take one electron from the grid. In fact, they believe that they’ll eventually have excess power that they’ll be able to put back into the grid.” 2) The Great Wyoming data center: Not to be outdone by its neighbor, Wyoming announced Project Jade, a 1.8-gigawatt data center last August but has since expanded it to 2.7 GW and the designer says in theory it could reach 10 GW. The entire state — one of the least populous in the US — uses less than 1 GW of power total. Matt Field, chief real estate officer for Crusoe Energy Systems, a co-builder of the center, said their goal is for the data center to bring all of its own power, so that it doesn’t affect local utility rates. “We’re colloquially viewing it as BYOP,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Bring your own power. So, we’re bringing our own power. We’re not trying to get the physical infrastructure that’s here to bring us power, As for water, the data center will usea closed loop system to cool its equipment. Project plans show five buildings of up to 800,000 square feet but Field said the initial water fill will be equivalent to the consumption of 20 households After that, water use for one year on an ongoing annual basis will be equivalent to less than three households.

What Has Changed About Data Center Opposition? There have always been local battles over data centers. Residents in Northern Virginia have fought over transmission corridors, noise, and land conversion for years. Communities in Arizona, Texas, and elsewhere have pushed back on water use and industrial encroachment. What feels different now is the combination of speed, scale, and political framing. First, AI has changed the physical profile of the sector. Development has moved far beyond the relatively low-profile enterprise and cloud facilities that local governments learned to accommodate in the 2010s. AI-era campuses carry larger electric loads, more aggressive cooling requirements, more visible infrastructure, and in some cases associated power generation or transmission upgrades. That shift changes perception. What was once positioned as a quiet tax-base enhancer now looks, to many communities, like a power-intensive industrial operation with uncertain local benefit. Second, the public argument has matured. Residents are no longer simply objecting to proximity. They are making detailed claims about water use, grid strain, ratepayer equity, environmental review, acoustic impact, tax subsidies, and long-term decommissioning risk. The debate has become specific. It is no longer generic NIMBY resistance. It is a structured critique of how AI infrastructure is being introduced into communities. Third, the issue now cuts across party lines and geographies. Maine, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, and North Carolina do not align to a single ideological pattern. This is not purely a climate-driven pushback or a local-control argument. It is both. Rural landowners, suburban residents, environmental groups, and local officials are arriving at resistance from different directions—but increasingly reaching the same conclusion: the old siting assumptions do not fit the AI-era buildout. From NIMBY to a Governance Gap Across markets, communities are discovering that the rules governing large-scale data center development are incomplete, outdated, or fragmented. Some localities are unsure