Data Centers
An AI campus is a commodity buyer before it is a technology asset. We source, finance and deliver the material it consumes, scheduled against the date the site can receive it.
Electrical and power accounts for forty to forty five percent of what it costs to build a data center. Underneath the switchgear and the busway sit refined copper, structural steel, aggregate and the fuel burned on site while a campus waits for the grid.
Medium and high voltage cable, busway and transformer windings carry most of the copper. Published intensity runs twenty to forty tonnes per megawatt built.
Structural steel, reinforcing bar and metal decking move in bulk, against a pour and erection sequence that runs across most of two years.
Campuses generating behind the meter burn gas for years ahead of energization. That is a term supply relationship rather than a single delivery.
Aggregate, cement and sand move through the civil phase. Distillate keeps standby sets and commissioning fills on schedule through the life of the asset.
Figures below are sized for a hundred megawatt campus. Copper intensity is published. The rest is derived from current construction benchmarks and stated operating assumptions, and every line is priced against the actual bill of materials before we quote it.
| Commodity | Where it lands | Per megawatt | Per campus | Buying window |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refined copper | Cable, busway and windings | 20 to 40 tonnes | 2,000 to 4,000 tonnes | Month 6 to 30 |
| Structural steel | Frame, decking and racking | 90 to 150 tonnes | 9,000 to 15,000 tonnes | Month 8 to 24 |
| Rebar and aggregate | Foundations, slabs and yards | Bulk, pour sequenced | Continuous through civils | Month 4 to 22 |
| Natural gas | On-site generation before energization | Roughly 0.06 Bcf a year | Roughly 6 Bcf a year | Term, from first fire |
| Distillate | Standby sets and commissioning | Tank fills and top-ups | Recurring through life | Month 20 onward |
Copper intensity of twenty to forty tonnes per megawatt is published industry data. Gas volume is derived at a heat rate of 8,500 Btu per kilowatt hour and an eighty percent capacity factor. Steel and aggregate are derived from 2026 construction cost benchmarks.
The receiving window
A transformer that arrives early congests a laydown yard. One that arrives late idles a commissioning crew. We hold title and carry the position until the site can take delivery, then release it into the window the schedule actually supports.
A developer or an EPC can buy material, credit and staging separately. Bringing them to one counterparty is where the schedule holds.
Direct relationships with mills, rod producers, cable makers and gas marketers, so material is bought at origin rather than off a distributor shelf.
Letters of credit, prepayment and borrowing base lines let long-lead material be ordered eighteen to twenty two months ahead without sitting on a developer balance sheet.
Inventory held at a regional yard and released against crane windows, pour sequences and commissioning dates rather than a purchase order written years earlier.
Digital infrastructure draws on corridors Elysium already runs. The copper comes out of the metals book, the gas and distillate out of energy, and the documentation and credit work is the same discipline applied to a new end market.
