Who pays for the watts
Five hyperscalers will try to spend $660–690B in 2026. The grid is the invoice.
The industry didn't run out of money. It ran into the grid. Five companies are ready to spend like a national infrastructure program. The hard part isn't raising the cash. It's whether the watts show up.
Capex is the bid. The tariff is the settlement.
Announced is not built
Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle are guiding $660–690 billion of capital expenditure in 2026, almost all of it data centers. Amazon is near $200 billion. Alphabet has guided $175–185 billion. Meta, $115–135 billion. That is the demand the market is trading. It is not steel in the ground.
The OpenAI-led Stargate program, announced in January 2025, planned roughly 7 GW across Texas, New Mexico, and Ohio by September 2025. The plan later moved past 9 GW and added Wisconsin and Michigan. Bloom Energy’s January 2026 power report put U.S. data-center demand at about 80 GW in 2025, heading toward about 150 GW by 2028.Bloom Energy, Jan 2026
A gigawatt in a keynote is a press-release gigawatt. It is not a signed interconnection.
Sightline Climate looked at this year's pipeline and got an ugly number. Of 16 GW slated for 2026, only about 5 GW is actually under construction. They think 30–50% of the rest misses the year.Sightline Climate Sightline and SemiAnalysis are fighting about the denominator. That fight is the number.
Data Center Watch counted 75 projects blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026, about $130 billion of project value. Of 63 local moratorium actions, 54 passed.Data Center Watch / 10a Labs
The industry can raise the money. It can't vote a substation into existence, and it can't print a transformer on a software cycle. The gap between announced gigawatts and power that's actually on is where the loss sits.
The vendor-financing loop
Money isn't scarce. The chip vendor is part banker now.
Reuters reported a $100 billion-scale Nvidia plan that pairs chip supply with a financial stake, to help OpenAI build at least 10 GW of Nvidia systems.Reuters
Ohio is no longer a rumor. On 17 August 2026 Nvidia filed an 8-K: residual-value guarantees with SB Energy for about 4.25 GW of IT load at the PORTS campus in Pike County. OpenAI is the tenant. Nvidia's payment is capped at $105 billion. Ready-for-service is expected beginning in 2028. Nvidia can add about 3.8 GW more if it wants. If OpenAI misses a lease payment, Nvidia covers the shortfall — then OpenAI has to pay Nvidia back.Nvidia 8-K, 17 Aug 2026
That is paper. Not talks.
Separately, Nvidia announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital over time for AI compute financing.Nvidia, 10 Aug 2026 Other people's money. Not Nvidia cash.
Google is running a quieter version. The Information reported a backstop of as much as about $44 billion of third-party data-center lease payments — the Anthropic / Broadcom side of the build. A lease backstop is a promise that if the tenant does not pay, a larger balance sheet will.
If utilization holds, this is working capital for compute. If it does not, the same documents allocate the loss.
The loop can't shorten a grid queue, a transformer wait, or a FERC review. Extra money just changes who sits in line.
Who pays for the watts
PJM’s capacity price is the cleanest public invoice in the country. It moved from $28.92 per MW-day in 2024/25 to $329.17 in 2026/27.PJM 2026/27 BRA That is a household bill.
PJM’s market monitor attributed 63% of the 2025/26 auction jump to data centers, about $9.3 billion recovered from customers.Monitoring Analytics via IEEFA The industry's study puts a smaller share on load.E3
At least 38 large-load tariffs were filed or adopted between 2018 and 2026; 30 of them in the last two years. The load that causes the upgrade pays for the upgrade, and pays whether the servers ever spin.
Virginia: loads of 25 MW and above pay at least 85% of contracted transmission and distribution and 60% of generation whether they use the power or not, on minimum 14-year contracts, with collateral per megawatt.Virginia SCC Ohio: large loads pay up front and 100% of the build-out.
On 4 March 2026, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed a Ratepayer Protection Pledge: build, bring, or buy generation; pay for delivery upgrades; pay whether they use the power or not.Ratepayer Protection Pledge It is nonbinding. A pledge is not a tariff. Utilities hold the pen.
FERC sent a show-cause in June 2026 to six regional operators. If a data center does not show up, households should not eat the wires.FERC, Jun 2026
If households stay off the hook, the watts still get paid for. They show up in the price of the cluster.
What I actually open the PDF for
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Energized megawatts
Count power that is on, and a signed interconnection. "Slated for 2026" is a hope.
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Who pays if the tenant walks
The 8-K answers this for Ohio: Nvidia, capped at $105 billion. If a deck has no name here, it is a press release.
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The tariff in that state
Virginia's 85 / 60 / 14. Ohio's 100% up front. A national pledge does not replace either.
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Water and cooling
A cooling plan that assumed water a county will not give is a delay, a rewrite, or a dead site.
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One tenant
A campus that only works if one buyer stays current is a credit. Price it as credit.
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Chip life vs building life
The GPUs go stale first. Residual-value guarantees exist because the hardware dies before the concrete does.
Someone pays for the watts. A hyperscaler, a chip vendor, a fund, a compute customer — or, if the tariff is written badly, a household that never asked for the cluster.