In partnership with

We’re almost through February, and from our estimates at InfraCore, most of 2026 data center capacity will be leased by the end of this quarter. That gives the market less than 45 days to close on what’s left. If you’re an off-taker still looking for significant contiguous capacity, think 5 MW or more, the window is real, and it’s closing faster than most people think.

Once those leases are signed, the next phase begins: a mad dash to get hardware, infrastructure, and construction crews mobilized in time to hit Ready-for-Service dates. Q2 through Q4 of this year will see an incredible amount of execution pressure as everyone races to make 2026 commitments real.

The Problem on the Buyer Side: Site Overload

So why aren’t buyers moving faster? In many cases, they’re drowning. A customer needs 10, 20, maybe 100 MW. They reach out to a few brokers, those brokers tap their networks, and suddenly three brokers become 15 and five sites become 20. Each site arrives with different details, in different formats, through different channels like email, spreadsheets, text messages. The customer ends up building their own master spreadsheet, chasing follow-ups through a game of telephone, and discovering that the same site appears multiple times with conflicting information.

We’ve had customers sign an NDA, receive a detailed site deck, and show up two weeks later not even realizing this was done and they had the information. This is what causes the deer-in-headlights delay. The best customers I work with have figured it out: work with a small number of trusted partners who are ruthlessly selective about what they present. My job isn’t to hand you 12 sites and hope something sticks. It’s to understand your requirements so I can say: here are two or three that actually fit.

The Problem on the Provider Side: Two Trains in the Night

When buyer and provider finally meet, they each want completely different things. The customer wants technical validation. Is the power real? What does the floor plan look like? Can I talk to the construction team? The provider wants financial validation. Can you pay for this? Who’s the end user? Show me audited financials. Both are reasonable, and neither wants to go first. Without someone coordinating, this standoff quietly kills deals.

The solution is running both workstreams in parallel. Financial review and technical review happen simultaneously, each side taking a step toward the other, keeping the deal’s momentum alive.

What Winning Looks Like

The savviest customers we work with know their technical requirements cold before they start looking. When they see a site that fits, they move. We’ve seen companies go from NDA to site visit to redlining term sheets within a week. In that first meeting, they’re confirming power is real, reviewing floor plans, and asking for the MSA before the meeting ends. Then they kick off financial review, technical review, and legal redlining in parallel.

Providers are also shifting. Many no longer want traditional LOIs because they’re non-binding and take sites off the market without commitment. Instead, they push for term sheets that flow directly into the MSA. The message is simple: first one to sign wins.

At InfraCore, we’re laser-focused on moving our remaining 2026 capacity and building our 2027–2028 inventory. This AI boom rolled right from ’25 into ’26, and it’s not letting up. Have your checklist ready. Move fast. This stuff won’t wait.

AI INFRA SUMMIT x PLUG AND PLAY

We are thrilled to announce that the AI INFRA SUMMIT (AIS5) is officially coming to Plug and Play in Silicon Valley on May 1, 2026. This beautiful, dynamic venue is the perfect setting to host the most critical conversations of the year. As the AI supercycle reaches a massive inflection point, Plug and Play will serve as the ultimate convening ground for the builders creating the models, the buyers deploying capital, and the connectors building the physical stack.

As we transition from the speculative "Gold Rush" of GPU allocation to a true "Industrial Revolution" focused on building sustainable AI factories, the stakes have never been higher. This summit is designed to tackle what comes next, moving beyond hand-waving hype to focus on the ground-truth deployments and hard engineering required to break through the physical walls of power, liquid cooling, and interconnects. Plug and Play offers the ideal collaborative space to house these frontline intelligence discussions and tactical deep dives.

Whether you are an enterprise leader, an AI developer, or an investor shaping the physical and digital future, this is your front-row seat to influence the ecosystem. Join us to ignite strategic partnerships, share real-world playbooks, and command the conversation driving the next $2 trillion in AI infrastructure deployment

Bay Area Startups Collectively Secured $163B MTD In February

February funding activity continued to set new records, closing the week at $111B and taking the month to $163.7B. That takes our 2026 Q1-to-date figure over $193B, already more than the 2025 full YEAR total. The largest funding this week - also the largest venture capital round ever – was the $110B round at a $840B valuation announced today by OpenAI. Just three investors made up the round, with Amazon putting in $50B, while Softbank and NVIDIA invested $30B each. $35B of Amazon's investment is based on milestones, including OpenAI attaining AGI and completing an IPO.

For startups raising capital: Stay on top of who's raising, who's closing and who's investing with the Pulse of the Valley weekday newsletter. Founders get the newsletter, database and alerts for just $7/month ($50 value). Check it out, sign up here.

Follow LinkSV on LinkedIn to stay on top of SV funding intelligence and key players in the startup ecosystem.

Early Stage:

• ZaiNar closed a $100M Series A, achieving sub-nanosecond time synchronization and distribution across wireless networks, transforming existing 5G and WiFi infrastructure into a comprehensive spatial sensing system.

• Salma Health closed a $80M Series A, an end-to-end integrated brain health company specializing in mental health, neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions.

• ChipAgents closed a $50M Series A, an Agentic AI platform that transforms specifications and code into production-ready RTL, verification assets, and automated root-cause analysis.

• Rowspace closed a $50M Series A, connects structured and unstructured data across a firm's entire history, models how that firm operates and thinks, and delivers that intelligence.

• Evoke Security closed a $4M Pre-Seed, the cybersecurity platform purpose-built to secure the agentic workforce.

Growth Stage:

• OpenAI closed a $110B Series unknown, an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.

• World Labs closed a $1B Series C, building frontier world models that can perceive, generate, reason, and interact with the 3D world.

• MatX closed a $500M Series B, designs hardware tailored for the world’s best AI models, dedicating every transistor to maximizing performance for large models.

• VITURE closed a $100M Series B,develops AR technology and is the home of the #1 XR glasses brand in the US.

• Ainekko closed a $14.7M Series B, building an open-source composable stack from inference to hardware.

AMD x Meta Expand AI Partnership

AMD and Meta just expanded their strategic partnership to support Meta’s next wave of AI infrastructure buildout.

This is not a one-off supply agreement. The companies are aligning roadmaps around AMD Instinct GPUs, rack-scale systems, and long-term AI deployment strategy.

For anyone tracking the AI infrastructure race, this is another signal that hyperscalers are actively diversifying GPU supply and locking in multi-year partnerships.

Read the full announcement here:
https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-2-24-amd-and-meta-announce-expanded-strategic-partnersh.html

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Logan Lemery
Head of Content // Team Ignite

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