Former Cumulus Execs Launch New Data Center Firm With $1B Equity Commitment
A private equity and infrastructure investor plans to deploy $1B into the formation of a new data center development company.
Five Point Infrastructure LLC is investing in the creation of PowerBridge LLC, led by former Cumulus Data CEO Alex Hernandez and other former Cumulus executives, the companies announced Thursday.
Through a partnership with Five Point affiliate company LandBridge, the new company will have access to 275,000 acres of developable land and connections to natural gas to power new data centers.
"With Five Point’s institutional support, our collective energy infrastructure, power operations, data center development, and fiber experience, and the significant additional value that other Five Point portfolio companies can bring for customers, we look forward to providing hyperscale customers with turnkey data center campus solutions at scale," Hernandez said in a statement.
The company will focus on developing and building gigawatt-scale data center campuses across North America. Developers and investment giants have launched a series of partnerships over the last year, with some planning to build data center campuses with more than 1 GW of capacity, much larger than traditional facilities, as artificial intelligence has supercharged demand.
One such project came from Hernandez and other Cumulus executives who have now launched PowerBridge. Cumulus built a 1,200-acre data center campus tied to Talen Energy's 2.5-gigawatt Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Pennsylvania. Last year, Amazon Web Services acquired the campus for $650M.
