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Axon Systems
Powered Land for AI Data Centers
Generative AI use is exploding, creating huge demand for computing power and big opportunities to meet that demand
The Stakes
Over the past year, the talk of the town has shifted from $10 billion compute clusters to $100 billion clusters to trillion-dollar clusters. Every six months another zero is added to the boardroom plans.
Behind the scenes, there’s a fierce scramble to secure every power contract still available for the rest of the decade, every voltage transformer that can possibly be procured. American big business is gearing up to pour trillions of dollars into a long-unseen mobilization of American industrial might.
By the end of the decade, American electricity production will have grown tens of percent; from the shale fields of Pennsylvania to the solar farms of Nevada, hundreds of millions of GPUs will hum. The AGI race has begun.
- Leopold Aschenbrenner, former OpenAI researcher, June 2024
For more detail on the scenario read:
Demand for Compute Power: Through the Roof
The Key Bottleneck: Grid Congestion
Competition for Capacity
Hyperscalers are fiercely competing to secure available megawatts. They are reopening older power plants and seeking new capacity, but this surge is causing a shortage of generation and transmission.
Persistent Issue
Adding more capacity is like widening a highway: it just invites more traffic by inducing latent demand. This will happen with compute as well as more capable model find more applications. So chronic electricity supply issues are to be expected.
Shortfall
This intense competition highlights a critical shortfall in power capacity. This presents a unique opportunity for companies that can provide reliable, cost-effective power solutions.
The Opportunity: Powered, Lit Land
1
Strategic Locations
Choose data center campus sites that are strategically located near abundant power sources, specifically solar and natural gas, and backbone fiber networks.
2
Build Co-Located Power
This approach minimizes our reliance on the electric grid and eliminates the need for expensive grid upgrades. A grid connection is optional and can come well after initial project completion for faster data center delivery times.
3
Competitive Advantage
We gain a significant competitive edge by building the power generation on-site, behind the meter (called a microgrid or power island), avoiding the fierce competition for public grid-based megawatts and securing access to reliable, cost-effective energy. The grid becomes a secondary power source or unneeded.
Strategy Overview
1
Secure Land
Acquire development rights from anchor landowners, ensuring a strong foundation for our project.
2
Obtain Entitlements
Secure necessary zoning approvals and utility entitlements to facilitate the project's construction.
3
Development Options
We have several pathways for project execution, including selling powered land to data center developers, directly to hyperscalers, or building and operating ourselves.
4
Going Vertical (Optional)
We can "go vertical" and build the power plant and powered data center shell ourselves, enabling us to control the entire development process.
Ichor: Axon's Internal Prospecting Tool
We are experts in data systems and analytics having built these tools for the energy industry for over 10 years.
We've built a prospecting tool for in-house evaluations, giving us a faster decision loop.
Data Sources
  • Fiber routes and carriers
  • Operating and planned data centers
  • Pipelines
  • Well surface locations
  • Land parcel owners and contact information
  • ERCOT interconnection queue
  • ERCOT Location Marginal Pricing
  • Public utility services areas
  • Transmission lines
  • Substation locations
  • Power plants
  • Solar resource - annual average hourly time series
  • Natural gas processing plants
  • Military owned land
  • State/National parks
  • Floodplain
  • Conservation easements
  • Grid capacity (substation and transmission)
  • Endangered species
  • Tribal lands
  • Terrain slope
Conclusion
The growing demand for AI compute is undeniable. By developing powered, strategically located data center campuses, we provide a critical solution that leverages locally abundant resources and allows our customers to skip the lines for grid power.
We are currently evaluating candidate sites across the US and are looking for partners to capitalize on this generational opportunity.
Reach out and say hello.
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