Cool Vector

david95a
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Cool Vector covers the rise of data centers and the digital infrastructure investment asset class. Through interviews and panel discussion with leaders in operations, capital, energy, real estate and technology, Cool Vector offers in-depth, lively conversations with the entire ecosystem of the booming digital infrastructure world. Cool Vector is produced by financial journalist David Snow in partnership with long-time data center operators Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood.  Full episodes of Cool Vector live on Apple Podcasts and other podcast channels, and video clips are shared on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram. The Cool Vector video-podcast homepage is here: https://coolvectormedia.com/ Socials: LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/posts/?feedView=all Instagram instagram.com/coolvectormedia TikTok tiktok.com/@coolvectormedia?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc Spotify podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elatromme Website coolvectormedia.com

  1. 3D AGO · VIDEO

    GI Partners: Competition for Digital Infra Deals is 'Really Positive'

    When Mike Armstrong first joined GI Partners in 2014, digital infrastructure assets that went up for auction would attract maybe five bidders. Fast forward to today's heated market, and Armstrong says between 20 to 30 bidders compete for assets in a sale process. Armstrong, a Managing Director and Head of Technology and Science Investments,  tells Cool Vector there are positives to the increased competition, such as pricing validation. In the meantime, he says “you have to be sharp” in order to stand out from the many new entrants to the market. Key Takeaways: • Cap rates are the signal to watch: In a market flooded with new capital and product, where cap rates settle will reveal the ecosystem’s collective confidence in future growth. • AI’s full economic impact remains unknowable, but the next 12–24 months will be decisive in determining what it means for data center deployment and investment returns. • Competition has exploded — bid sheets that once had five names now carry 20 to 30 — making sharp conviction and proprietary relationships the only sustainable edge. Access the full library of Cool Vector primary-source market intelligence, including a searchable archive of transcripts, on the Cool Vector Substack: https://coolvector.substack.com/

    8 min

  2. JAN 7 · VIDEO

    Tower Infrastructure Keeps Adding "Gizmo" Revenue

    Towers are the digital infrastructure that make modern connectivity possible. As demand for wireless connectivity surges, towers are becoming more valuable, while at the same time an increasing number of “gadgets” are being added to tower sites to serve the needs of proliferating digitally-enabled services. In this episode of Cool Vector, David Snow chatted with Omar Jaffrey, Founder and Managing Partner of Palistar; David Bacino, CEO of Symphony Towers; Yannis Macheras, CEO of Harmony Towers; and Andrej Danis, TMT Partner at AlixPartners to unpack why tower infrastructure is an increasingly relevant asset class and some of the most durable assets in digital infrastructure. Highlights from the discussion include: • Why communication towers function as highly defensible assets, with zoning and permitting creating natural barriers to entry that favor collocation over duplication; once built, adding a second or third tenant is far easier than approving a new tower next door. • How the tower business has shifted from carrier-owned “tower farms” to independent infrastructure providers, allowing mobile network operators to redirect capital toward network upgrades rather than steel in the ground. • Why scale matters: owning or operating thousands of sites dramatically improves operating efficiency and unlocks EBITDA growth that smaller portfolios simply can’t achieve. • How disciplined site selection determines whether a tower becomes a long-term cash-flow engine or a missed opportunity. • Why demand is expanding beyond the big mobile carriers, as new entrants like fixed wireless providers, connected vehicles, aviation connectivity, and IoT platforms increasingly rely on zoned communication sites. • How towers are becoming a core piece of long-duration infrastructure portfolios, valued for their durability, predictable cash flows, REIT-friendly structures, and resilience through economic cycles. As device counts grow from millions to tens of billions, towers remain the physical backbone of the wireless revolution. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #coolvector #towers #wirelessinfrastructure #digitalrealestate #connectivity #infrastructure

    26 min

  3. 12/15/2025 · VIDEO

    Inside the 'Winner Take Most' Hyperscaler Battle

    GPUs versus TPUs, depreciating GPUs and data centers that may never be built - Cool Vector experts take you inside the issues causing the most uncertainty in the global data center market. A year ago, TD Cowan's Michael Elias roiled the data center world when he reported Microsoft was pulling back from some of its projects. Today, a "winner take most" urgency continues to drive the market, but hyperscalers increasingly are aware that what is being built today may not be optimized for the compute needs of tomorrow. In "Inside the 'Winner Take Most' Hyperscaler Battle," Cool Vector's David Snow speaks with Elias, the Director of Equity Research for Communications Infrastructure at TD Cowen, Eli Scher, Managing Partner at United Integrity Advisors, and Phillip Koblence a Cool Vector editorial director, as well as COO of NYI, CEO of Critical Ventures, UIA and a co-founder of Nomad Futurist. Among the takeaways of this lively conversation: • Why Microsoft’s pullback was less a demand collapse than a pipeline triage. What initially appeared to be a hyperscaler retreat was in fact a selective pruning of under-deliverable projects, coinciding with workload redistribution toward partners such as Oracle and CoreWeave. “They went through and they culled the pipeline and removed the stuff that didn’t make sense," says Scher. • Why forecasted compute demand continues to be impossible to keep up with, and why some data center developers will get "a bit over their skiis" along the way, says Elias. • The entrance of "GPU on demand" players like CoreWeave is confusing some market observers as to the ultimate source of demand, causing some to wonder, "Who's workload is it anyway?" • Depreciation schedules of data center assets are central to business models, but no one knows the true life of new GPU chips. One problem, say our experts, is that GPUs are designed to run parallel workloads, but actual future workload needs may end up being more focused, making chips like Google's TPUs a more cost-effective solution.  • Why GPU deployment is pushing the "upper bounds" of data center infrastructure. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #coolvector #datacenter #microsoft #gpu #digitalinfrastructure

    24 min

  4. 11/10/2025 · VIDEO

    Like Data Centers, Real Estate Once was Absent From Institutional Portfolios

    The future of the digital infrastructure asset class can be seen in the history of the real estate asset class, experts from PREA and Five Point Infrastructure tell Cool Vector.  A mountain of institutional capital is eyeing data centers, but investors - including US pension funds - can often spend years studying a new asset class before beginning to allocate to it. Real estate is a good example of this journey from a niche opportunity, deemed uninvestable by institutional capital, to an enormous, universally embraced, mature asset class.  Cool Vector spoke with two institutional investment experts to better understand the current view of data centers among institutional real estate investors, and what the future may hold for digital infrastructure in the institutional portfolio.  This fascinating conversation between Greg MacKinnon, Director of Research at Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) and Jeff Eaton, a Partner at Five Point Infrastructure, covers topics of interest to anyone seeking to better understand the increasing partnership between private capital and data centers. Among the key takeaways: • Institutional investors are just beginning the learning curve on data centers—just like they once did with real estate. Despite massive interest, pensions and endowments are still figuring out which allocation "bucket" data centers belong in, and how to underwrite them—a process similar to how real estate entered institutional allocations in the 1970s. “Everyone's learning about it, but it takes a while for an institutional investor to get to a point where they can actually sort of put capital to work," says MacKinnon.  • Institutional investors—especially public pensions—move slowly and cautiously when adopting a new category, but once it's approved, that category can rapidly grow to become a core portfolio component. "They have to go through a rigorous allocation process, which can take six months, a year, a year and a half, especially if you're a sovereign wealth fund or a public pension fund," says Eaton. • Greenfield data center projects offer high returns, but carry risk many investors are not yet equipped to manage. “That just causes an institutional investor to have to do even more work: Is it worth the extra three or 400 basis points for this extra risk that I'm taking?" asks Eaton. • Data center demand is creating new adjacent investment themes—especially around energy infrastructure. “Even if you've allocated to data centers before, there's going to be other opportunities for you to get decent returns by having derivative exposure to the data center asset class," says Eaton. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/ #coolvector #digitalinfrastructure #datacenter #datacenters #realestate #cre

    22 min

  5. 11/03/2025 · VIDEO

    ECP Was Buying Power Plants When They Were Out of Style

    Energy Capital Partners, among the most dominant energy players in the global data center market, now sees an upside potential to its many power-plant sites that did not exist during decades of zero-growth in the electricity markets, says Andrew Gilbert, a Partner at ECP.  Gilbert recently sat for an interview with Cool Vector, during which he described ECP's response the surging demand for energy out of the digital infrastructure and manufacturing spaces.  ECP has become a highly sought-after power-infrastructure partner for the data-center industry by financing and operating generation platforms that directly underpin hyperscale and cloud-campus build-outs. With more than $32 billion in committed capital since its 2005 founding, ECP's marquee partnerships include a $50 billion strategic alliance with KKR and a $25 billion joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s ADQ.  Among the key takeaways of the interview: • Tapping existing power supply remains far less expensive than building out new capacity. That said, ECP is now seeing opportunities to add capacity to existing power-plant sites, wheras in years prior its portfolio of assets was acquired at valuations well below replacement cost.  • The queues for power interconnection among data center developers are "overstated" because of the strategy of proliferating proposals to see which get approved first. • Solar power still has a "cost advantage." • Some institutional investors have seen such success with digital infrastructure investments that their portfolios have become over-allocated to the sub-asset class.  • The US has a natural-gas "constraint problem" that will hamper the build out of infrastructure necessary for what most market observers believe will be the most critical source of power for data centers going forward.

    29 min

  6. 10/10/2025 · VIDEO

    Thor Equities' New Data Center Head Learned a Lot at Google

    While at Google, where he led data center acquisitions across North America, Raj Vohra learned "we're just scratching the surface of what the world needs for compute capacity," says Vohra, now the head of data center investing for Thor Equities. "We'll see evolutions of different product types," Vorha tells Cool Vector in a wide-ranging interview. "There's going to be a lot of demand in a lot of different forms over the foreseeable future." Vorha speaks with Cool Vector's David Snow about what he learned at Google about data centers, and what Thor Equities' approach will be to the digital infrastructure opportunity. Among the topics discussed: Demand for compute continues to outpace supply. From his decade at Google, Vohra learned that demand for compute capacity is only accelerating, driven by both consumer and enterprise applications. The last few years have seen demand far exceed supply, creating urgency around quality sites with available power. “For 10 years now, there's been a supply demand mismatch, but I would say in the last couple years, that demand just blew past supply," he says. Thor Equities’ data center strategy targets growth markets. Thor, a $20 billion AUM investment firm best known for its track record in real estate, is not chasing the crowded, established hubs of Northern Virginia or Silicon Valley. Instead, its focus is on land acquisition and infrastructure development in “path of growth” markets that hyperscalers will need next. "We're focused on real estate infrastructure development for hyperscale data centers in what I would call next-up markets, in the path of growth for large hyperscale development users," Vohra says.  Industrial real estate expertise provides a competitive edge. Thor’s long track record in industrial real estate translates well into the infrastructure demands of data centers. Teams that know how to handle utilities, municipalities, and complex site development are able to bridge into data centers faster, even as specialists are still needed. “The data center acquisition and development space is ultimately an infrastructure game," Vohra says.

    17 min

  7. 10/01/2025

    The Modular Future of Data Centers is Coming to a Parking Lot Near You

    Agentic AI is driving the use of modular data centers, according to Tony Grayson, former President of Compass Datacenters, and now President and General Manager of Northstar Federal and Northstar Enterprise & Defense, where he has innovated modular data centers designed to bring flexibility and efficiency to a market in which technology evolves faster than traditional large-scale data centers can keep up with. Grayson is a well-known leader within the data center world. In a lively conversation with his friends and industry sojourners Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood, Grayson talks about the frustrating history and bright future of modular data centers and the AI applications that are finally driving demand for smaller data centers that can fit in parking lots.  As the former Commanding Officer of a US Navy submarine, Grayson shares keen insights into mission-critical energy, having been responsible for, essentially, a "submerged nuclear reactor" in which even small mistakes can lead to fatalities. Among the key takeaways of Cool Vector's conversation with Tony Grayson: • Modular data centers are set to dominate deployment timelines. Grayson argues that modular deployments are becoming essential as compute demand from AI workloads outpaces hyperscale construction timelines. Instead of multi-year builds, modular units can be deployed in “three to six months,” making them critical for real-time AI inference such as fraud detection and language translation. “What modular data centers give you is a very, very quick time in the market at a very good cost on something that’s easily upgradeable,” says Grayson. • Distributed compute is replacing "bigger is better" economics. Scale for its own sake is no longer aligned with technology or economics. Customers want smaller, controllable AI environments—sometimes literally “in the parking lot”— rather than massive centralized builds. “It’s not a how big can you build? It’s how can you build a hundred thousand of these things just for one platform and place them all around the world?” says Grayson. • Nuclear power may lose admirers after overpromises. While nuclear power is again being floated as a solution for energy-hungry data centers, Grayson—drawing on his background as a submarine commander—warned of overpromising. He noted that advanced reactor projects face long regulatory and technical hurdles, predicting a backlash if expectations are not met. “I am worried that nuclear is gonna get a bad name when all these Gen 4s who promised delivery in a couple years never happen,” he says. • Decomposable infrastructure will displace GPUs. Grayson highighted the looming shift from GPU-dominated architectures to decomposable infrastructure and custom ASICs, which can outperform GPUs at lower cost. This evolution will fundamentally reshape facility design and economics over the next five years. “You are getting AI right now, which is agentic machine to machine stuff," says Grayson. "In a couple years, they’re gonna have decomposable infrastructure where basically you’re separating your CPU, your memory, your storage with optical, and then we’re gonna build a data center for that,” says Grayson • Europe enforces sustainability as U.S. lags behind. Sustainability remains a patchy priority, with European regulators pushing strict standards while U.S. operators often give it “lip service.” Time-to-market and ROI remain dominant drivers, even if climate goals are compromised. “I think Europe is super sustainable. In the US, it’s more lip service than anything else right now,” says Grayson. Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/   Visit Tony Grayson's website: https://www.tonygraysonvet.com/

    43 min

  8. 09/11/2025 · VIDEO

    EQT, DigitalBridge and Zayo See 'Gargantuan' Upside in Fiber Networks

    Two of the world's biggest digital infrastructure investors - EQT and DigitalBridge - are bullish about fiber networks, and tell Cool Vector why.   The long-term bet on fiber began in 2019, when EQT and DigitalBridge jointly took Zayo private in a $14 billion transaction. In March 2025, the group announced another wave of investment - Zayo's acquisition of Crown Castle's fiber solutions business for $4.25 billion, and EQT Active Core Infrastructure's acquisition of the Crown Castle small-cells business for $4.25 billion.   In a recent interview, Cool Vector's David Snow and Phillip Koblence caught up with  Arnav Mitra, Managing Director of EQT, Jonathan Friesel, Senior Managing Director of DigitalBridge, and Bill Long, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, of Zayo, to learn about the bright future of fiber optic networks.     "Connectivity is increasing, bandwidth needs are increasing," says Jonathan Friesel of DigitalBridge. "There was a study a bunch of years ago where they talked about the hierarchy of needs, and broadband connectivity came out ahead of water, which literally means that people would rather die than lose their broadband connection."   Among the key takeaways of this fascinating conversation:    AI is creating a step-function in bandwidth, giving fiber investors a “free option” on outsized growth. "The way that this deal came together was, it was a good asset at the right price with a gargantuan upside option value," says Bill Long of Zayo.    For hyperscalers and edge expansion, fiber has become as decisive as power in site selection and network strategy. "Fiber is certainly just as critical to the data center ecosystem as power is," says Arnav Mitra of EQT.    Zayo’s take-private unlocked the multi-year investments needed to integrate 47 acquisitions and deliver a single, coherent platform. "Being a private company, being able to make those long-term value creation bets, is a better instrument than waking up every quarter to have the public markets judging you," says Long.   Physics favors fiber for moving massive data volumes—making in-ground fiber a long-lived, compounding asset. "Being able to constrain a wave in a piece of fiber is always going to be several orders of magnitude more efficient for conveying large amounts of data relative to broadcasting it over an open medium like the air," says Long.   Clear signs of market froth include speculative builds and financing deals that effectively give away future monetization. "Anytime you're doing long-term IRUs of your assets, and you have no further opportunity to monetize them, that feels more like an asset sale or a capital infusion," says Mitra.   Follow Cool Vector on LinkedIn:    https://www.linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/

    35 min
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Cool Vector covers the rise of data centers and the digital infrastructure investment asset class. Through interviews and panel discussion with leaders in operations, capital, energy, real estate and technology, Cool Vector offers in-depth, lively conversations with the entire ecosystem of the booming digital infrastructure world. Cool Vector is produced by financial journalist David Snow in partnership with long-time data center operators Phillip Koblence and Nabeel Mahmood.  Full episodes of Cool Vector live on Apple Podcasts and other podcast channels, and video clips are shared on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram. The Cool Vector video-podcast homepage is here: https://coolvectormedia.com/ Socials: LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/cool-vector-media/posts/?feedView=all Instagram instagram.com/coolvectormedia TikTok tiktok.com/@coolvectormedia?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc Spotify podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/elatromme Website coolvectormedia.com

Information

  • Creator
    david95a
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2024 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Cool Vector