THE GRID
The $475 Million Box
A year ago, the average data center cost $178 million to build. Today it costs $475 million. Same type of building. Same basic function. Nearly three times the price tag.
That number comes from ConstructConnect's June 2026 report, and it stopped me mid-scroll.
Do This before Elon’s Next Tweet
I’ve been following Elon’s career for decades…
When the mainstream media said Tesla would fail…
I doubled down.
And the stock has risen 1,510% since.
I’ve inspected Elon’s facilities around the country…
And I was one of the first to predict SpaceX’s IPO.
Now, I believe Elon is about to make his latest invention available to the public.
When he does, sales could go through the roof.
And the stock price of one of his critical partners could soar.
I expect Elon to make this announcement any day now. By the end of the month at worst.
But you never know with Elon…
He could post it on X tomorrow.
So there’s very little time to act.
Before it’s front page news.
Through April, data center construction starts hit $49.5 billion. That's nearly four times the $13.6 billion at the same point last year.
And the money isn't just going into server racks. Power infrastructure starts rose 21.2% in Q1 2026. Wires. Substations. Transformers. The stuff that plugs these buildings into the grid.
JLL's 2026 outlook puts global build costs at $11.3 million per megawatt. For AI-ready sites with liquid cooling, it can top $20 million per megawatt. That's the new floor, not the ceiling.
Four hyperscalers alone — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft — plan to spend between $595 billion and $625 billion in capital expenditures this year. Most of that goes to data center builds.
I keep coming back to a simple fact. The price of the building has tripled. The price of power to run it keeps climbing. And no one is slowing down.
The construction boom is real. The cost explosion is real. And both flow straight to the same place: the power grid.
Follow the concrete and copper. That's where the next decade of returns lives.
RESISTANCE
New Jersey Draws a Line
Yesterday was June 1. If you pay a ComEd bill in Illinois, your rate just jumped 12%. If you pay a bill in New Jersey, you got hit even harder — up to 20%.
New Jersey's rate spike has a clear villain in the public mind: data centers.
New Jersey residential bills rose roughly 20% in 2025. State lawmakers responded by passing Assembly Bill 796, which forces data centers using 100+ megawatts to cover at least 85% of their own grid infrastructure costs. The bill is awaiting the governor's signature.
The math behind the anger is stark. PJM capacity prices jumped from $28.92 per megawatt-day at the 2022 auction to $269.92 at the 2024 auction. That's a near tenfold increase. Data centers drove an estimated 63% of that spike.
Right now, when a big data center needs a new substation or upgraded wires, every ratepayer chips in. A796 would end that. The data center pays its own way.
New Jersey isn't alone. The data center industry itself funded a report arguing there's no clear link between its growth and higher bills. Axios reported the findings in May. But tell that to a homeowner staring at a 20% jump.
The political wind is shifting. States are done writing blank checks for AI's power tab.
The American dream is coming alive again in our Heartland thanks to a strange new technology…
Jeff Brown says this "Heartland Revival" could unleash $100 trillion in wealth and mint new millionaires all across the nation.
And he just headed to a dying coal town in Wyoming to investigate. What he found will shock you.
WIRED IN
Summer Starts. The Grid Is Thin.
New York's 417-megawatt margin. NYISO says its summer buffer is the smallest in recent history. If a heat wave hits 95°F for three days, the margin flips to negative 1,679 MW. At 98°F, it drops to negative 3,370 MW. That's blackout territory. The state's reliability margin has fallen nearly 80% since 2022.
The solar math doesn't add up at peak. NERC reports 30.5 GW of new solar added. But only 16.4 GW counts at peak demand — because the riskiest hours now fall after sunset. In winter, 11 GW of new solar supplied just 1.2 GW at peak. An 89% discount. Natural gas is still the only major source that shows up when called.
The risk window is stretching. Summer stress used to mean July and August. NERC now flags spring and fall as growing concerns too. Heat events are arriving earlier. The EIA projects cooling degree days above the 10-year average across most of the country this summer. June is no longer safe prep time.
NERC cut the number of elevated-risk regions from six to three. That sounds like progress. But as the agency's own director put it, improved conditions should not be read as declining risk.
The grid got bigger this year. Demand got bigger faster. And summer just started.
