AI, Power and Platforms | Shaam Farooq

  Crypto Miners Already Built What AI Needs. Why Crypto Miners Are Quietly Becoming the Next Generation of AI Data Center Giants The AI race is no longer just about GPUs. It is increasingly becoming a race for: power energized infrastructure transmission access interconnection rights and speed-to-deployment. And in that race, crypto miners may already own part of the advantage. Years before the AI infrastructure boom accelerated into public view, Texas was already quietly absorbing one of the largest compute migrations in modern history. When China cracked down on cryptocurrency mining in 2021, entire fleets of ASIC miners and supporting infrastructure rapidly relocated across the globe. Cargo after cargo of compute equipment moved into the United States, with a significant portion landing in Texas and other power-abundant regions. Whinstone US Breaks Ground to Build the World’s Largest Bitcoin Mining Facility in Rockdale, Texas • Central Texas Council of Governments At the time, t...

Why Oil, Gas, LNG, Midstream, Utilities and Power Companies Must Rethink Capital, Leadership and Infrastructure In The AI Era

How America’s Oil Patch Is Becoming an AI Power Reserve

AI infrastructure doesn’t have a power problem. It has a deployment problem.   The MW-Scale Deployment Model That Will Outrun GW Megaprojects The AI infrastructure race is exposing a hard truth: The real bottleneck is not chips. It is not software. It is not even capital. It is power delivery . Across the market, billions are being committed to hyperscale campuses, large transmission projects, and grid-dependent data center strategies. Yet many of those deployments face the same obstacles: long interconnection queues, permitting delays, transmission congestion, and rising electricity costs. At the same time, a significant energy source already exists, already flows daily, and in many cases is still underutilized or wasted. That source is stranded gas for AI infrastructure.

  The AI infrastructure race isn’t just a technology shift. It’s a capital and operating model shift. And the firms best positioned to win it aren’t hyperscalers alone—they’re private equity platforms that can control assets across power, infrastructure, and execution. This is where the advantage starts to compound. AI Data Centers Are the Prize. The Value Chain Is the Business. Private equity will make more money from AI data centers by owning the ecosystem and not just the buildings full of GPUs. Capital is flooding into hyperscale and AI-native campuses. Smart trade. But the real outperformance won’t come from facilities alone. It will come from firms that invest across the entire AI-infrastructure stack : 🏗️ Construction & MEP platforms ⚡ Power generation (gas, renewables, BESS, microgrids) 🔌 Transmission & grid-interconnection services 🏭 Substation & electrical integrators 🛠️ Utility services & field operations 🧊 Advanced cooling & chip-adjacent m...

Most conversations around AI infrastructure focus on compute. They’re missing the constraint that actually matters: power. The playbook that scaled cloud doesn’t work here. Hyperscalers are no longer just buying power—they’re building it, securing it, and controlling it behind the meter. This is where the AI infrastructure race actually gets decided.