Desperation to Get Data Centers Online Is Reshaping Companies' Bargaining Power

No two contracts for AI data center buildouts look quite the same. It’s a matchmaking process on every level involving a range of companies: those that secure land and power, those that build and operate data centers, the financiers that lend money for the projects, and the customers—including major cloud providers such as Microsoft and Google. Negotiations involve thorny issues like who will take on what risk if things go wrong.

In this dance, the biggest cloud providers usually have had the upper hand in negotiating to rent capacity from newer clouds CoreWeave, Nebius and Nscale and a host of data center operators because the big companies have the most capital and best credit ratings. But things are changing: Cloud providers like Microsoft are so desperate to ensure the server racks they’ve ordered from Nvidia can get working as quickly as possible that data center operators now have more power to negotiate down the risks they shoulder, data center and credit executives say.