Data Center Market Update: Week of September 28, 2026

Power and permits, not demand, set the pace again this week: Microsoft won approval for a 96MW Sydney campus only after a long planning process, Oracle moved to secure up to a fifth of a Wisconsin nuclear plant’s output for a Stargate site, and local governments from Arizona to Wisconsin kept writing the rules that decide where capacity can go. Meanwhile Akamai’s $11.6 billion Anthropic contract showed AI buyers now commit to CPU capacity as well as GPUs.

Key takeaways

• Microsoft received NSW approval on 2 October for its AU$1.263 billion, 96MW Honeman Close data centre in western Sydney, with 140MVA of power demand and a 100% renewable-electricity condition to be met by 2030.
• Oracle and We Energies agreed that Oracle could subscribe to 10–20% of Point Beach Nuclear Plant’s output for Project Lighthouse in Port Washington, Wisconsin, subject to Wisconsin PSC approval.
• Akamai signed a seven-year, $11.6 billion compute agreement with Anthropic on 25 September, expandable by about $9 billion, with about $5.5 billion of related capex.
• Zone Frontier leased 4,077 acres in Potter County, Texas, for a campus of 200MW initially and 500MW+ potentially; Crusoe filed for a $4.8 billion, two-building campus in Jayton, Texas.
• Amazon won unanimous township approval for a 350-acre, roughly 2 million sq ft campus in Kline Township, Pennsylvania, on 1 October, with blasting and acoustic-testing conditions.
• Moratoria spread: Palm Springs extended its pause to 25 August 2028, and Edgewater, Florida passed a permanent ban.
• GPU rental prices were broadly flat: H100 median $3.29/hour, B200 $6.25/hour.

Asia-Pacific: approvals arrive, with conditions

Microsoft’s Honeman Close facility in Huntingwood, Sydney, was approved on 2 October after an assessment that included objections from Blacktown City Council over a protected conservation area. Reported specifications: five storeys, 40 data halls, 39,267 sqm of gross floor area, 3.9 megalitres of water a day, a projected PUE of 1.28 and 46 diesel generators with 1.532 million litres of diesel storage. The approval requires 100% renewable electricity before operations begin; Microsoft has committed to meet that by 2030.

In Canberra, CDC Data Centres received conditional approval for Beard 2, a three-storey, 12-hall building adding 84MW at a stated works cost of AU$203.5 million. The two Australian approvals together add 180MW of consented IT capacity in a market where Sydney wholesale rents and vacancy are tracked in our price index.

Project	Operator	IT load	Stated cost	Status
Honeman Close, Sydney	Microsoft	96MW	AU$1.263B	NSW approval, 2 Oct
Beard 2, Canberra	CDC Data Centres	84MW	AU$203.5M	Conditional approval

Per-MW cost is not comparable across the two: the Microsoft figure is the filed investment value for a full campus, while CDC’s number is the works cost stated in its application. Buyers benchmarking build costs should use disclosed all-in figures, as discussed in our data center due diligence guide.

Power: nuclear subscription and the Texas land grab

We Energies and Oracle reached an agreement on 2 October that would let Oracle subscribe to between 10% and 20% of the electricity generated by the 60-year-old Point Beach Nuclear Plant. The power would supply Project Lighthouse, the Port Washington campus co-developed with OpenAI. We Energies would separately purchase 86% of the plant’s output under a new 20-year agreement, and the utility estimates about $300 million of fuel-cost savings for other customers over five years. The Wisconsin Public Service Commission must approve it. The structure is notable because the load is paying for existing generation rather than waiting for new supply; see our energy hub for how tariffs and supply models differ by market.

In Texas, two developers moved to secure land and power rather than wait in the queue. Zone Frontier’s 30-year lease covers 4,077 acres around Southwestern Public Service’s 345kV Potter County substation, with between 200 and 800 acres designated for data center use and at least 1,800 acres for solar and storage. Crusoe filed for two buildings of about 759,000 sq ft each in Jayton, Kent County, a $4.8 billion investment with construction starting at the end of January 2027 and go-live in May and July 2029; it is described as a spur of the company’s Project Hyper in Childress.

All of this sits inside a policy environment that remains unsettled. Governor Abbott said on 27 September that he wants cities and counties to decide whether data centers can be built locally, but that would require legislation. The permit pause covered in our Texas permit halt guide is unchanged, with audit reports due 19 October.

Deals and demand: CPU contracts join GPU leases

Akamai’s agreement with Anthropic runs seven years at $11.6 billion for CPU workloads across core and edge environments, with an optional expansion of about $9 billion. Akamai pegged related capital expenditure at about $5.5 billion, including roughly $1.7 billion of additional 2026 spend to pre-purchase supply-chain components such as memory. The warrant issued to Anthropic covers up to about 5% of Akamai’s common stock at an exercise price of $111.33. For capacity buyers, the signal is that AI-driven demand now extends to distributed CPU capacity, which favors metro and edge footprints. Track announced capacity on our Capacity Watch page and deal flow in the transactions tracker.

Atop the week’s news, ownership changes from earlier in the quarter are settling. Equinix and CPP Investments completed their $4 billion acquisition of atNorth on 2 September, with CPP holding about 51%, Equinix about 34% and Partners Group about 10%.

Local rules: approvals and moratoria in the same week

Jurisdiction	Action	Date
Kline Township, PA	Approved AWS campus, 350 acres, about 2M sq ft	1 Oct
Glendale, AZ	Hearing on Project Eagle, 160 acres; decision set for 27 Oct	1 Oct
Palm Springs, CA	Moratorium extended to 25 Aug 2028	1 Oct
Mercer County, KY	Rejected zoning district; 1-year moratorium stays	30 Sep
Washington County, MD	12-month moratorium; zoning amendment draft by March 2027	30 Sep
Edgewater, FL	Permanent moratorium on data centers and crypto mining	14 Sep

Madison, Wisconsin is circulating a framework with a 100,000 sq ft cap that excludes hyperscale campuses, with a Common Council vote expected in January 2027, and Trenton, Ohio voters will decide a ban on projects above 25MW in November. The pattern: large approvals still pass where utilities and road access exist, but small jurisdictions increasingly use pauses to buy time. Our grid connection queues guide covers the parallel interconnection bottleneck.

GPU pricing

Coloprice’s tracker, updated 28 September, shows the H100 median on-demand rate at $3.29/GPU-hour (range $1.30–12.29), H200 at $4.40, B200 at $6.25 (from $6.01, within normal cross-tracker spread) and GB200 NVL72 at $13.25. The GB200 floor remains GMI Cloud’s $8.00 listing. Live data is on the GPU tracker.

What this means for capacity buyers

• Treat approval as a milestone, not delivery. Sydney’s approval followed a prolonged review and carries a 2030 renewable condition; build timelines should include conditions precedent.
• Ask for power structure in the term sheet. Whether supply is grid, behind-the-meter or a utility subscription now changes delivery risk more than the shell does.
• Screen sites by jurisdiction. Moratoria run from 12 months to 22 months in this week’s examples; confirm zoning status before committing to pre-lease deposits.
• Diversify beyond GPU-only plans. Large CPU commitments mean competition for metro and edge colocation as well as dense AI halls.
• Use the data. Request a quote with specific kW and metro through our quote form and compare against the Coloprice index.