Cipher Digital Extends Texas Data Center Lease to 20 Years, Contracted Revenue Tops $9 Billion

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company must earn permission from local communities to build its data centers, as opposition to the AI infrastructure boom grows across the United States. In March, Microsoft announced it was ending the use of non-disclosure agreements with towns and terminating existing ones, part of what the company calls its Community-First AI Infrastructure Plan unveiled in January. That plan includes Microsoft paying to ensure electricity rates in data-center areas don't rise, minimizing and replenishing more water than the company uses, hiring local workers, not asking communities to reduce taxes on data centers, and investing in AI training. Nadella pointed to Quincy, Washington, where Microsoft built its first company-owned data center in 2006, noting the town's poverty rate fell from 29.4% to 13.1% between 2012 and 2023, tax rates for residents declined, and the improved tax base helped pay for a new hospital and other municipal facilities. An increasing number of states have introduced legislation to halt or ban data center construction, with New York issuing a statewide one-year moratorium and Texas blocking new projects until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas completes an audit of their impact on the power grid and water resources.

Core Scientific has appointed Jay Elms as Chief Commercial Officer, expanding its senior leadership bench. Elms joins the bitcoin miner with a background in sales and commercial leadership at large data center and technology operators, including sales roles at CyrusOne and NTT focused on hyperscale and wholesale customers. The new CCO role focuses on customer relationships and commercial execution across Core Scientific's hosting and infrastructure services, as the company leans harder into high performance compute and long dated AI power leases. The company runs high-density colocation facilities and digital asset mining operations in the US, and its narrative hinges on reallocating capacity from bitcoin mining to HPC and executing on large contracts like the CoreWeave and AMD deals. The key signal for investors is whether Elms can help convert contracted power and reserved capacity into a broader mix of paying AI and hyperscale customers beyond CoreWeave and AMD, with concrete evidence being disclosed signings for additional multi year HPC or colocation agreements and progress updates on filling the roughly 1.9 GW of optioned capacity.