Five Point Infrastructure announced the formation and funding of PowerBridge LLC, with an equity commitment of up to $1 billion. PowerBridge is focused on developing, building, and managing gigawatt-scale data center campuses, associated power infrastructure and fiber network connectivity throughout North America.
The formation of PowerBridge builds on Five Point’s powered land strategy, developing significant digital infrastructure projects that require abundant and reliable power and related infrastructure. Through affiliate company LandBridge, a land management business, PowerBridge will immediately gain access to more than 275,000 surface acres for infrastructure development, as well as direct access to low cost natural gas due to LandBridge’s strategic positioning adjacent to the Waha Gas market hub. The platform will also uniquely benefit from its relationship with Five Point backed WaterBridge, a pioneer of water management and the largest pureplay, privately-held midstream water management company in the Delaware Basin, in addressing the cooling water needs of data centers and new power generation.
PowerBridge CEO Alex Hernandez said, “We are excited to partner with Five Point to capitalize on this generational moment in the growth and convergence of energy and digital infrastructure. With Five Point’s institutional support, our collective energy infrastructure, power operations, data center development, and fiber experience, and the significant additional value that other Five Point portfolio companies can bring for customers, we look forward to providing hyperscale customers with turnkey data center campus solutions at scale.”
The PowerBridge team, including Mr. Hernandez and other former Cumulus executives, is the only team to successfully develop and deliver a gigawatt-scale data center campus directly connected to wholesale power generation assets, without a grid connection. The 1 GW Cumulus data center campus was directly connected to Talen Energy’s 2.6 GW Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant in Berwick, PA. Validating the success of this project, AWS is in the process of deploying approximately $12 billion of capital into this digital giga-campus by constructing 17 data center buildings (~960 MW in aggregate). The team that developed this campus has been re-assembled to execute similar digital giga-campus deployments within PowerBridge.
David Capobianco, CEO and Managing Partner of Five Point, said, “The formation of PowerBridge adds another important component to our powered land strategy. Together with Landbridge, WaterBridge, our deep institutional relationships and track record of building critical infrastructure companies, PowerBridge is well positioned to create best-in-class data, power, and fiber solutions for data center customers.” Mr. Capobianco continued, “Alex and his team transformed the power and data center industries with the Cumulus project, and we firmly believe this experience, combined with our resources, will redefine the digital infrastructure landscape once again by providing a differentiated, integrated and competitive solution at multi-gigawatt scale.”
