Why You Can't Miss DICE South 2026

What You'll Learn:

Why Texas and the broader Southern corridor have become benchmark markets for AI era capacity, capital deployment, and new campus development.
Which site selection, utility engagement, and permitting strategies are helping teams turn more shortlisted locations into fully entitled, power-ready projects?
What capital providers are looking for as AI, neocloud, and enterprise workloads reshape credit views, deal structures, and return expectations.
How leading developers are managing design complexity, construction risk, and schedule pressure while still bringing new facilities online at speed.
Which power planning approaches, including hybrid utility and onsite solutions, are proving most resilient as grid constraints intensify?
How high-density design, liquid cooling, and evolving white space layouts are changing the way teams think about shells, envelopes, and long-term flexibility.
Where modular, prefabricated, and skid-based approaches are genuinely cutting timelines and de-risking delivery across fast-moving campuses.
How operators are using automation, data, and new playbooks to run AI-heavy sites more efficiently while maintaining reliability and compliance.
What practical risk mitigation, governance, and partnership models are helping stakeholders align incentives from land and capital decisions through long-term operations?

How You'll Do More Business From Attending This Conference:

Gain concrete strategies to move projects from promising sites to energized, revenue-generating facilities faster and with fewer surprises.
Learn how peers are structuring deals, contracts, and delivery models so you can de-risk projects and protect margins in volatile conditions.
Sharpen your decisions on markets, partners, technologies, and modular approaches that truly improve speed to market and long term performance.
Understand which AI, high-density, and cooling innovations are commercially meaningful today and which remain experimental.
Build relationships with the developers, operators, capital partners, and solution providers who are closest to current deal flow and best practices.

Who You'll Network With:

Developers, Owners, and Operators — leaders shaping strategy, assembling sites, and delivering the next generation of AI-ready campuses.
Construction and Design Professionals — architects, general contractors, engineers, and modular specialists raising the bar on speed, quality, and constructability.
Utility and Infrastructure Partners — power, grid, and network stakeholders focused on delivering the megawatts and connectivity new campuses require.
Investors and Financial Partners — equity, lenders, and capital allocators underwriting data center demand, customer mix, and evolving risk profiles.
Technology and Solution Providers — power, cooling, modular, monitoring, and automation experts enabling high-density, resilient operations.
Policy, Regulatory, and Community Stakeholders — advisors and decision makers navigating permitting, incentives, compliance, and the public lens on large-scale projects.

Why You Should Attend:

DICE South is the essential gathering for anyone shaping the next chapter of data center growth across Texas and the broader Southern corridor. With an agenda built around real market pressures and opportunities, from power constraints and AI-driven design to modular delivery, risk, and capital, every session is geared toward decisions you are making right now. You will hear directly from the developers, operators, investors, and partners who are delivering projects, restructuring deals, and rethinking operations in this fast-moving region. Whether you are selecting sites, financing campuses, building facilities, or running high-density environments, you will leave with clearer strategies, stronger relationships, and a sharper view of where the Southern market is headed next.

Relevant News and Developments

Are you an end user*?

Click here to be considered for a complimentary pass. *Hyperscaler, colocation provider (non-sales), investor, private equity, or enterprise tenant.

To request disability-related accommodations, please contact ally.araco@bisnow.com no later than seven business days prior to the event.

For questions, group ticket rates or interest in becoming a speaker or sponsor, please email our DICE Global Director, Adam Knobloch, adam.knobloch@bisnow.com

Agenda

August 12	Activity
12:30 PM 1:00 PM	Registration and Networking
1:00 PM 1:10 PM	Opening Remarks: Welcome to DICE South 2026!
1:10 PM 1:55 PM	Southern Data Center Playbook: How Texas and Its Neighbors Are Redefining the Map Texas and the broader Southern corridor have moved into the first tier of global data center regions, but not every submarket is playing the same game. Developers, operators and investors are learning where power, land and network proximity still line up for large campuses and where constraints are already reshaping strategies. At the same time, new capital and new customer types are changing what success looks like in Dallas Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and beyond. This session walks through what recent deals and pipelines reveal about the Souths evolving role on the national stage and how stakeholders can position themselves for the next wave of growth.
1:55 PM 2:35 PM	Smart Site Bets: How to Choose Locations That Actually Get Built Getting a site under contract is easy compared to actually getting it entitled, powered and ready to build. In 2026, site selection means weighing utility relationships, interconnection timelines, policy environments, workforce depth and infrastructure corridors alongside traditional land and fiber basics. Teams that bet wrong can lose years and millions, while teams that bet right can secure durable advantages in key markets. This panel unpacks how experienced players screen, compare and prioritize sites so more of their maybes turn into real projects.
2:35 PM 3:00 PM	Networking Break
3:00 PM 3:40 PM	Underwriting the AI Wave: How Customer Mix Reshapes Returns The surge of AI, neocloud and evolving enterprise demand is changing not just who fills data centers, but how those assets are financed. Different customer mixes bring different expectations for term, pricing, credit quality and renewal behavior, and those inputs now flow directly into underwriting models and capital stacks. At the same time, power constraints, shifting macro conditions and new lease structures are forcing investors to refine how they view downside risk and upside potential across markets. This session breaks down how capital providers are reading todays tenant landscape and what that means for where they will place money over the next twelve to twenty four months.
3:40 PM 4:20 PM	Building Faster, Smarter: Construction Tactics That Survive Real World Conditions Demand for capacity is rising just as projects face more complex mechanical and electrical systems, longer equipment lead times and tighter labor markets. Developers and contractors must find ways to keep schedules moving through design changes, utility uncertainty and evolving AI driven requirements. Some tactics look great on paper but fall apart in the field, while others reliably save time, cost and rework across multiple projects. In this discussion, leaders share the construction and development approaches that have actually held up under real world pressure and how they are adjusting them for the next round of builds.
4:20 PM 5:15 PM	Day 1 Post-Event Cocktail Reception!!
August 13	Activity
7:30 AM 8:20 AM	Registration, Breakfast and Networking
8:20 AM 8:30 AM	Opening Remarks Day 2
8:30 AM 9:15 AM	Getting EPC Right: How to Align Teams for Complex Data Center Programs Multi phase, multi market data center programs are exposing the limits of traditional design to bid to build delivery. Owners are experimenting with different engineering, procurement and construction structures, long term partner arrangements and program level governance to speed decisions and align incentives around cost, schedule and quality. At the same time, contractors and consultants are reassessing what risks they can realistically share across portfolios without compromising performance. This panel explores which EPC and partnership models are proving most effective for complex AI era pipelines and what to watch out for when you try to raise the bar on your own delivery structure.
9:15 AM 9:30 AM	Top Ten Data Center Legal and Business Issues for Powered Land, Leases and MSA's That You Should Know About
9:30 AM 10:10 AM	Power Planning That Works: How to Blend Utility, Onsite and Hybrid Solutions In high growth markets, power plans that rely on a single path are increasingly risky. Developers and operators are learning how to blend utility capacity, onsite generation, storage and demand side strategies to bridge gaps and create more resilient and bankable projects. At the same time, utilities are under pressure to manage record load forecasts and community expectations, adding more complexity to timing and commitments. This session walks through practical examples of power strategies that have worked, those that have not and how to build a blended plan that can survive shifting conditions.
10:10 AM 10:35 AM	Networking Break
10:35 AM 11:05 AM	Designing for High Density: How to Prepare Todays Shells for Tomorrows Racks AI and advanced compute are driving densities far beyond what many existing design standards anticipated. Teams are rethinking building envelopes, structural loading, power distribution, cooling architectures and equipment layouts so facilities can support both current deployments and future, more demanding workloads. Choices made now will determine how easily sites can adopt liquid cooling, densify white space or accommodate new hardware generations. In this session, design and engineering leaders share how they are future proofing shells and systems so todays projects do not become tomorrows bottlenecks.
11:05 AM 11:45 AM	Operating the AI Data Center: How Teams, Tools and Playbooks Are Evolving Running data centers that support AI heavy workloads requires new approaches to monitoring, incident response, energy management and staffing. Operators are layering in automation, analytics and integrated platforms while still depending on experienced teams to interpret data and manage edge cases. At the same time, customer expectations for transparency, responsiveness and performance reporting continue to rise. This panel looks at how leading operators are updating their tools, playbooks and organizational structures to keep uptime high and operations efficient in a more demanding environment.
11:45 AM 1:00 PM	Networking Lunch
12:15 PM 12:35 PM	From Blueprint to Build: Best Practices for Physical Security Throughout Development
1:00 PM 1:40 PM	Delivery at Scale: How to Move From One Off Wins to a Repeatable System Winning once on a fast and successful data center project is hard; doing it repeatedly across multiple markets is harder. To deliver at scale, organizations are building playbooks that connect standard designs, prefabricated elements, digital coordination and program level governance into a coherent system. At the same time, they are figuring out how to capture lessons learned and feed real performance data back into design and planning for the next site. This conversation dives into how top players are turning individual project successes into a repeatable delivery engine that can keep pace with AI and cloud demand.
1:40 PM 2:20 PM	De-Risking Data Centers: How to Spot and Share Risk From Land to Operations and Beyond Risk in todays data center projects spans site control, power, equipment, counterparties, contracts and long term operating performance. Capital providers and project teams are rethinking how to identify red flags earlier, structure contracts and insurance programs and decide who should carry which risks. At the same time, unpredictable elements like grid constraints, equipment lead times and policy changes can shift the risk profile midstream. This panel breaks down practical approaches to spotting, pricing and sharing risk across the capital stack and project lifecycle so the right parties are accountable without slowing viable projects.
2:20 PM 2:40 PM	Networking Break
2:40 PM 3:20 PM	Modular for the AI Era: How to Use Prefab and Skids to Win on Speed to Market As timelines tighten and power often arrives in phases, modular and prefabricated approaches are becoming essential tools rather than edge experiments. Skid based power systems, modular white space and prefabricated plant rooms can shorten critical paths and make campus expansion more predictable when deployed thoughtfully. At the same time, owners must decide what to standardize, what to customize and how to integrate modular elements into broader campus designs. This session explores where modular and prefab really move the needle on speed to market and how to avoid the pitfalls that can turn promised savings into added complexity.
3:20 PM 4:00 PM	AI, Energy and Real Estate: What This Second Industrial Revolution Means for Markets The convergence of AI demand, energy infrastructure and large scale digital real estate is beginning to reshape industrial and regional dynamics on a scale that resembles a new industrial revolution. Data centers are influencing where new transmission and generation get built, how metros think about land use and economic development and which markets rise or fall in strategic importance. At the same time, national priorities around competitiveness, climate and resilience are increasingly tied to how quickly and wisely this infrastructure is deployed. This keynote style session steps back from project details to explore how AI, energy and real estate together could redefine market winners and losers over the next decade.
4:00 PM 5:00 PM	Post-Event Networking!!