Weekly briefs and monthly reports on AI compute, data centres and the power behind them: what moved, what it means for the build-out, and what to watch next. Prepared by Vailinor Analysts from public sources.
Figures given in Malaysia's Parliament showed operating data centres drawing about 1.37 GW against 6 GW of contracted maximum load, CoreWeave's bonds traded at distressed levels, and PJM obtained an emergency order letting it call on data-centre backup generators, which it did not need to use. TSMC said its own checks on US power came back "so far so good", and ASML said its planned 2027 and 2028 supply will not fully meet demand.
Firmus pulled its IPO and DayOne's US listing filing sorted its capacity by stage, with 962 MW in service and 1,328 MW under construction within about 2.3 GW of customer bookings, while FERC rejected the core of PJM's plan for connecting large loads. US opposition reached council votes and the November ballot, and regulators halted site work in Finland and West Java over missing environmental approvals.
FERC accepted PJM's backstop procurement but suspended it to February 2027, and its order recorded the market monitor's estimate that 4,017 MW of data-centre load had been cancelled or delayed. Nscale's listing filing disclosed up to US$44.6 billion of agreements with Anthropic at a West Virginia campus it says can deliver up to 8 GW of behind-the-meter power, with financing not yet committed, while Oracle reported US$288 billion of data-centre leases not yet started.
Texas ordered an audit of every data centre in ERCOT's connection queue, FERC gave grid operators until November to answer its large-load orders, and PJM proposed curtailing new large loads first in emergencies when they do not bring enough capacity of their own. NVIDIA guaranteed leases covering 4.25 GW of IT load at an Ohio campus, and TrendForce projected that memory will take a growing share of cloud providers' capital spending.
PJM's capacity auction cleared at its price cap and short of its reliability requirement, and its board proposed that new large loads without their own capacity take a curtailable service. Alphabet and Amazon raised their spending plans, Amazon partly on memory prices, while TSMC said packaging capacity now limits its customers' growth.
FERC ordered six US grid operators to justify or rewrite their rules for connecting large loads, with co-location and behind-the-meter generation among the reform areas for five of them, and Chevron agreed a 20-year deal to supply a Microsoft data centre from a planned co-located gas plant of about 2.67 GW. SpaceX listed with AI compute first among its uses of proceeds, Korea set out an 18.4 GW AI data-centre plan with at least 8 GW of power pledged, and China's new energy plan pushes computing centres toward green-power direct connections.
SpaceX's S-1 disclosed that its Colossus II cluster can run entirely on its own behind-the-meter gas plant, and that Anthropic has agreed to pay US$1.25 billion a month for compute after a reduced-fee ramp, under agreements either side can end on 90 days' notice. NERC issued a Level 3 alert on data-centre loads, Korea passed its AI Data Center Special Act, China published a plan tying AI compute to clean power, and Tenaga Nasional reported about 1 GW of actual data-centre load on its system against about 4.5 GW of maximum demand.
Microsoft guided to roughly US$190 billion of capital expenditure in 2026, including about US$25 billion from higher component prices, Meta raised its range to US$125 billion to US$145 billion, and Anthropic committed to up to 5 GW from Amazon and about 3.5 GW through Broadcom, the latter dependent on its commercial success. FERC accepted part and rejected part of PJM's co-location compliance filing and said it intends to act on large-load interconnection by the end of June, while in South-East Asia several land and campus deals were tied to power, from DayOne's signed 511 MVA agreement in Batam to a Johor land purchase conditional on Data Centre Task Force approval and a TNB power letter.
Seven of the largest AI and cloud companies signed a White House pledge on 4 March to cover the cost of the new generation their data centres need, and by month end Crusoe had announced a 900 MW campus for Microsoft with a dedicated 900 MW on-site plant while Meta agreed to fund seven more utility gas plants in Louisiana. Rule-makers moved to set terms for grid access, with Texas proposing security and a fee of US$50,000 per MW each for large loads, and Australia drafting connection standards and setting national expectations for data centres.
Alphabet guided 2026 capital expenditure to US$175 billion to US$185 billion and Amazon to about US$200 billion, and OpenAI announced US$110 billion of new investment, part of it conditional, alongside 3 GW of dedicated NVIDIA inference capacity. Power stayed the constraint, with the US President calling on large tech companies to provide their own power, PJM proposing terms for co-located load and Malaysia saying it has been limiting approvals for new data centres not linked to AI.
In January, access to grid power for large data-centre loads was increasingly tied to conditions, led by PJM's move toward curtailing new load that does not bring its own generation, while Malaysia's penalty on data centres that use less than 85% of their declared demand drew fresh attention. Capital kept coming regardless, with Meta guiding 2026 capital expenditure to as much as US$135 billion, DayOne raising more than US$2 billion and Digital Edge committing US$4.5 billion in Greater Jakarta.