The largest cloud and AI companies are spending at a pace few industries have seen. Futurum estimates that Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle committed $660–690 billion of capital spending for 2026, up from about $380 billion in 2025 (Futurum, February 2026). Moody’s Ratings expects U.S. hyperscaler capital spending to reach $700 billion in 2026 and $870 billion in 2027 (Data Center Dynamics, March 2026).
A large share of that money buys chips. But every chip has to be powered, and that power has to be generated, connected, converted and cooled. That is where the constraint has moved, and it is why we started with the hardware under AI and industry.
Demand is rising faster than the grid was planned for
The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers used about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, around 1.5% of the world’s consumption, and projects that use will more than double to about 945 TWh by 2030. The United States accounts for by far the largest share of that increase, with data centers making up nearly half of U.S. electricity demand growth to 2030 (IEA, Energy and AI, April 2025).
Utility forecasts tell the same story. The consultancy Grid Strategies found that U.S. utilities’ five-year forecast of peak load growth reached 166 gigawatts for 2025–2030, with roughly 90 GW linked to data centers. Three years earlier, the same five-year forecast was 24 GW (Grid Strategies, November 2025).
Forecasts are not orders. The same report estimates that the data center portion of utility forecasts is likely overstated by roughly 25 GW. Even with that haircut, the growth is several times what utilities planned for only a few years ago.
Texas, in particular
Texas shows both the scale and the uncertainty. ERCOT, which runs most of the state’s grid, received 225 new large-load interconnection requests in 2025, representing more than 250,000 megawatts of forecast demand, about 70% of it from data centers. ERCOT’s highest recorded peak demand is 85,508 MW, set in August 2023; its April 2026 forecast projects 367,790 MW in 2032 (Texas Tribune, June 2026).
For equipment makers, Texas matters twice: as one of the fastest-growing markets for new load, and as a place where much of the generation, transmission and distribution equipment those projects need will have to be installed.
Not all of those projects will be built. Texas regulators have moved to a batch study process, starting with a first group of data center proposals that have already secured financing and land, to separate real projects from speculative ones (Texas Tribune, June 2026).
The grid connects slowly
On the supply side, the queue to connect new power plants and storage to the grid remains long. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data show about 2,061 GW of generation and storage capacity actively seeking interconnection at the end of 2025, about 10% less than a year earlier. The typical time from an interconnection request to commercial operation now exceeds five years, and of the capacity that requested interconnection from 2000 to 2020, just 13% had come online by the end of 2025, while 75% had withdrawn (American Public Power Association, summarizing LBNL data, July 2026).
The IEA warns that unless grid risks are addressed, around 20% of planned data center projects could be at risk of delays (IEA, April 2025).
The equipment is scarce
Even when a project has a connection, it needs the equipment to use it. Wood Mackenzie data, reported by POWER magazine, put the average lead time for a power transformer at 128 weeks in the second quarter of 2025, with generator step-up transformers at 144 weeks and switchgear at 44 weeks. Power transformer prices were up 77% since 2019, and some classes of distribution transformers were up as much as 95%. Wood Mackenzie estimated a 30% supply shortfall for power transformers and 10% for distribution transformers in 2025, as power transformer demand rose 119% from 2019 (POWER, January 2026).
The scarce input is no longer capital. It is equipment that can be delivered, connected and trusted.
Inside the building, the architecture is changing
The power path inside the data center is changing too. As a market example, NVIDIA has said it plans full-scale production of 800-volt DC data centers to coincide with its Kyber rack-scale systems in 2027, replacing traditional 54-volt in-rack power distribution. The company cites up to 5% better end-to-end power efficiency and 45% less copper than 415-volt AC systems, and says it and its partners are studying both transformer-based and solid-state transformer approaches (NVIDIA, May 2025). These are the company’s own statements; we have not verified them, and NVIDIA is not a Dark Ice Ventures investment.
Power and heat travel together. Every watt delivered to a chip ends up as heat that has to be removed, so denser racks raise the stakes for cooling as much as for power delivery. That is why we treat the electrical path and the thermal path as one problem, even though they sit in different verticals.
Shifts like this rewrite the bill of materials: higher-voltage DC power at the rack, new power conversion stages, and more heat to move per square foot.
Where we think the openings are
The constraints above map closely onto several of our hardware verticals:
- Grid & Power Equipment Tech: solid-state transformers, switchgear, power conversion and behind-the-meter generation equipment, all categories where lead times and prices have risen.
- Power Semiconductor Tech: GaN and SiC devices, voltage regulator modules and high-voltage DC rack power.
- Cooling & Thermal Tech: heat exchangers, chillers, and liquid and immersion cooling hardware, including equipment sold to data centers.
- Sensing & Measurement Tech: instruments, industrial sensors and condition monitoring that help scarce equipment run longer and fail less.
Scarcity does not make buyers less careful. A utility that waits more than two years for a transformer cannot afford to install one that fails. New suppliers still need a field record and a warranty buyers can trust, which is why we are building the Texas Proving Ground and working to arrange insurer-backed performance warranties.
What it takes to sell into this market
Demand alone does not open a utility’s or a data center operator’s purchasing process. Buyers of grid and facility equipment typically want evidence that a product meets the standards their engineers specify, a record of operating in the field, a supplier that can deliver and service units on schedule, and a warranty that will still be honored years from now. For a young company, each of those is a separate hurdle, and together they can take longer than the product itself took to build.
Long lead times also cut both ways. They give buyers a reason to look at new suppliers. They also mean that a new supplier which promises a delivery date and misses it will rarely get a second chance. Manufacturing readiness matters as much as the technology.
What could change
We hold this view with humility. Spending plans can be cut. Data center forecasts may prove overstated, as Grid Strategies itself suggests, and many large-load requests in Texas will never be built. Manufacturers are adding capacity, and efficiency gains could slow demand. Any of these would ease the pressure.
Our view is narrower: even if demand lands lower than today’s forecasts, the backlog of equipment and connections is measured in years, and the companies that remove those bottlenecks will still need a first buyer. That is the step we want to help with.
Sources
- Futurum, February 2026. AI Capex 2026: The $690B Infrastructure Sprint. futurumgroup.com/insights/ai-capex-2026-the-690b-infrastructure-sprint
- Data Center Dynamics, March 2026. US hyperscaler capex to top $700bn in 2026 (Moody’s Ratings). www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/us-hyperscaler-capex-to-top-700bn-in-2026-investors-fear-overbuild-and-weak-returns-moodys
- International Energy Agency, April 2025. Energy and AI: Executive summary. www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/executive-summary
- Grid Strategies, November 2025. National Load Growth Report 2025. gridstrategiesllc.com/wp-content/uploads/Grid-Strategies-National-Load-Growth-Report-2025.pdf
- Texas Tribune, June 2026. Texas data centers and the ERCOT grid. www.texastribune.org/2026/06/17/texas-ercot-data-center-energy-grid
- American Public Power Association, July 2026. Backlog of power plants seeking transmission grid connection eased somewhat in 2025: LBNL. www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/backlog-power-plants-seeking-transmission-grid-connection-eased-somewhat-2025-lbnl
- POWER magazine, January 2026. Transformers in 2026: Shortage, Scramble, or Self-Inflicted Crisis?. www.powermag.com/transformers-in-2026-shortage-scramble-or-self-inflicted-crisis
- NVIDIA, May 2025. NVIDIA 800 V HVDC Architecture Will Power the Next Generation of AI Factories. developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-800-v-hvdc-architecture-will-power-the-next-generation-of-ai-factories
Dark Ice Ventures · Oct 9, 2026
This note is for information only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or fund interest.
