A shortage of skilled mechanical, electrical, and plumbing workers is the biggest risk to America's data center construction surge, according to Bernstein analyst Chad Dillard. Only about 30% of the MEP labor force resides where 70% of data center projects are planned, and the pool of qualified workers is far smaller than the 1.8 million headline figure suggests. At recent peak recruitment rates, the US has added roughly 15,000 mechanical, 30,000 electrical, and 15,000 plumbing craft laborers, but that pace has slowed since 2023 and training remains a bottleneck. Dillard warns that data center capacity cannot grow materially faster unless labor productivity improves or the sector takes a greater share of workers from the rest of the construction economy. The essential economy, which includes construction and utilities, accounts for $12 trillion of GDP and 95 million jobs, yet faces persistent labor shortages as older workers retire and Gen Z numbers shrink.
IREN Fair Value Trimmed to US$79.03 as AI Cloud Wins Meet Build Out Risks
IREN's fair value estimate has been trimmed from US$80.93 to US$79.03, a modest adjustment reflecting a mix of growing AI cloud contracts and ongoing questions around execution and supply build out through 2027. The revision lifts revenue growth assumptions to 168.01% from 125.79% and net profit margin expectations to 11.73% from 5.79%, while the future P/E assumption drops to 31.26x from 90.29x and the discount rate rises to 9.41% from 8.83%. On the bullish side, JPMorgan shifted IREN from Underweight to Overweight with a US$65 price target, citing a partnership with Nvidia, new customer signings and higher industry pricing, while H.C. Wainwright raised its target to US$90 after IREN announced US$2.8b of new multi year AI cloud contracts and lifted its 2026 AI cloud annual recurring revenue target to more than US$4b. Northland initiated IREN at Outperform with a US$99 price target, and Freedom Capital upgraded the stock from Hold to Buy. Freedom Capital nonetheless flagged execution on supply additions over the next two years as a central risk, noting the story depends heavily on adding capacity on schedule.
Nvidia-Backed Nscale Files for US IPO After $1.02 Billion Loss
Nscale, the London-based AI data center developer backed by Nvidia and Microsoft, filed publicly for an initial public offering in New York, seeking to raise as much as $3 billion. The company reported a net loss of $1.02 billion on revenue of $140.6 million for the six months ended June 30, compared with a net loss of $368.9 million on revenue of $10.4 million a year earlier, according to its Friday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Spun off from a cryptocurrency mining operation in early 2024, Nscale was valued at about $14.6 billion in a March Series C round led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries, with Nvidia and Nokia Oyj also participating. The company has agreed to add more than 30,000 Nvidia chips to an existing rental agreement with Microsoft at its Narvik, Norway gigafactory, and Anthropic has agreed to spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from its flagship West Virginia data center development. The offering is being led by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, with shares expected to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NSCL.
Tigress Analyst Raises Alphabet Price Target to Street-High $485
Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth reiterated a Strong Buy rating on Alphabet and raised his price target to a Street-high $485 from $415, implying roughly 39.6% upside. The bullish thesis centers on Alphabet turning its massive AI investments into growth across Search, Cloud and Gemini, with Feinseth arguing AI Overviews and AI Mode can make Google more useful for complex, high-intent queries. Recent results support that argument: Alphabet's second-quarter revenue rose 24% from a year earlier to $119.8 billion, Search and Other revenue increased 17%, YouTube advertising grew 13%, and operating income climbed 30% to $40.77 billion. Google Cloud revenue surged 82% to $24.8 billion, operating income more than tripled to $8.8 billion, margins reached 35.6%, and its $514 billion backlog gives visibility into future enterprise demand. Gemini has reached 950 million monthly active users, more than 9 million monthly developers and roughly 22 billion API tokens processed per minute, and Feinseth sees monetization opportunities across subscriptions, APIs, enterprise software, agents and productivity products, though the risk remains that Alphabet must prove its enormous AI spending generates sufficient returns.
