Rackline Indexes
The price of powered capacity
Capacity, leases, and GPU pricing lead. Gas and the chip sit between that book and power.
The view
Capacity remains a seller’s market
Vacancy, preleasing, and rent momentum point in the same direction: deliverable powered capacity remains scarcer than announced pipelines suggest. GPU rental and energy prints should be read as separate operating inputs, not blended into a synthetic cost. Gas-to-Chip is the one conversion on the page, and it runs the whole chain: gas price, heat rate, PUE, the market lease ask, and finally what an hour on a frontier board sells for.
- Capacity
- 78 / 100
- Delivery
- 80.4% of primary-market construction preleased
- Pricing
- Every CBRE requirement band rose in H1 2026
- Gas-to-Chip
- $792 of GPU revenue per MMBtu
Watch · Whether available pipeline rises faster than six months of current demand. · Whether power delivery dates begin to loosen lease terms. · Whether GPU rental declines offset facility and energy inflation.
Rackline index
Rackline Capacity Scarcity Index
tight
out of 100
- Vacancy pressure
- 1.4% vacancy
- Forward commitments
- 80.4% of construction preleased
- Lease momentum
- +6.8% average across size bands
- Absorption momentum
- +11.7% year over year
Calculation
Forty percent vacancy pressure, 30 percent preleasing, 20 percent lease-rate momentum, and 10 percent absorption growth. Each input is normalized to a 0–100 pressure scale. CBRE’s eight primary colocation markets are the common book.
Rackline index
Rackline Development Pressure Index
tight
out of 100
- Pipeline scale
- 68.6% of installed supply
- Pipeline committed
- 80.4% preleased
- Build-cost pressure
- +47% year over year
Calculation
Forty percent construction relative to installed supply, 35 percent precommitment, and 25 percent build-cost inflation. Pipeline and vacancy universes are kept on CBRE’s primary-market book; Colliers supplies the cost signal.
Rackline index
Rackline Capex Momentum Index
tight
out of 100
- Sequential move
- +27.1% on the quarter
- Annual move
- +87.1% year over year
- Guidance re-mark
- +4.6% since April
- Cash absorption
- 67% of operating cash flow
Calculation
Thirty-five percent the sequential move in combined quarterly capex, 35 percent the move on the same quarter a year earlier, 15 percent how far full-year guidance has been re-marked since April, and 15 percent capex as a share of operating cash flow. The sequential and annual moves are normalized against 30 percent and 100 percent respectively, which is roughly what this cohort has been running; the re-mark is normalized against 10 percent. The book is Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, on as-reported purchases of property and equipment. It is corporate capex, not a disclosed data-centre line, because none of the four publishes one.
Market matrix
All eight primary markets, one book
CBRE H1 2026 · vacancy is available divided by inventory · 10,903 MW
Vacancy, inventory, and construction are the H1 book. The dollar is a 2026 ask when a house printed one this year, with the house, the requirement, and the period under the figure. Where H1 published a move and not a dollar, the cell says so. The last range sits underneath, so a 2025 card is not the index rate. New York Tri-State is the New York card and the New Jersey card. The lease signal stays the half’s move.
Swipe to read across
| Market | Vacancy | Inventory MW | Available MW | Share of book | Under construction | 2026 ask | Lease signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern Virginia | 0.24% | 4,496.5 | 10.8 | 41.2% | +16.5% | CBRE · 10 MW+ · H1 2026 | 10 MW+ |
| Atlanta | 1.64% | 1,803.2 | 29.5 | 16.5% | +52.3% | No 2026 dollar Last range · $140–$155 · JLL · 1–5 MW · H1 2025 | 10 MW+ |
| Dallas–Fort Worth | 2.76% | 1,432.8 | 39.6 | 13.1% | +81% · 95% preleased · 3.7 GW planned | No 2026 dollar Last range · $130–$170 · JLL · 1–5 MW · H1 2025 | |
| Phoenix | 1.13% | 1,069.2 | 12.1 | 9.8% | No 2026 dollar Last range · $150–$210 · JLL · 1–5 MW · H1 2025 | ||
| Chicago | 2.20% | 910.6 | 20.0 | 8.4% | CBRE · 250–500 kW · Q1 2026 | 10 MW+ | |
| Silicon Valley | 4.16% | 509.2 | 21.2 | 4.7% | CBRE · 250 kW+ · H1 2026 | 10 MW+ | |
| Hillsboro | 0.22% | 491.4 | 1.1 | 4.5% | Over 90% preleased | No 2026 dollar Last range · $175–$225 · CBRE · Size not stated · Year-end 2025 | 10 MW+ |
| New York Tri-State | 7.21% | 190.0 | 13.7 | 1.7% | 10 MW+ |
GPU
Weighted index
5 SKUs · basket $5.36 · Ask houses, OCPI, card
A100 80GB
$/GPU-hr
6 asks · OCPI · card · quoted in the last day
H100 SXM
$/GPU-hr
8 asks · OCPI · card · quoted in the last day
H200
$/GPU-hr
4 asks · OCPI · card · quoted in the last day
B200
$/GPU-hr
3 asks · OCPI · card · quoted in the last day
B300
$/GPU-hr
3 asks · quoted in the last day
This is the price to rent an hour. NVIDIA does not publish a price to buy the board. Price of Compute, Ornn, and CoreWeave settle rentals. CME and ICE have no posted GPU price. A purchase print would need an OEM quote or a filing, and neither is on this tape.
Capex book
What the buyers are spending
Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta · cash PPE · not a disclosed data-centre line
Swipe to read across
| Quarter | Combined | On quarter | On year | Microsoft | Alphabet | Amazon | Meta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | 71.8 | — | — | 16.7 | 17.2 | 25.0 | 12.9 |
| Q2 2025 | 88.2 | +22.8% | — | 17.1 | 22.4 | 32.2 | 16.5 |
| Q3 2025 | 97.3 | +10.3% | — | 19.4 | 24.0 | 35.1 | 18.8 |
| Q4 2025 | 118.7 | +22.0% | — | 29.9 | 27.9 | 39.5 | 21.4 |
| Q1 2026 | 129.8 | +9.4% | +80.8% | 30.9 | 35.7 | 44.2 | 19.0 |
| Q2 2026 | 165.0 | +27.1% | +87.1% | 35.8 | 44.9 | 54.2 | 30.1 |
Billions of dollars · combined column is Rackline’s sum of the four filings
The year, re-marked
Guidance moved three times in six months
| Company | Opened | April | July |
|---|---|---|---|
| AmazonRaised once | ~$200bn | ~$200bn | ~$220bn |
| AlphabetRaised twice | $175–185bn | $180–190bn | $195–205bn |
| MicrosoftLease reclassification, not a cut | ~$190bn | ~$190bn | ~$175bn |
| MetaFloor raised twice | $115–135bn | $125–145bn | $130–145bn |
- January 2026
- $640bn and up
- April 2026
- $695–725bn
- July 2026
- $735–750bn
Microsoft is the one number that fell, and it fell because capacity moved from finance leases to operating leases. The dollars did not leave; they left the line. Read it as a reclassification, not a cut.
Who is paying, and out of what
Concentration and cash cover
- Amazon
- $54.2bn · 32.8%
- Alphabet
- $44.9bn · 27.2%
- Microsoft
- $35.8bn · 21.7%
- Meta
- $30.1bn · 18.2%
Share of Q2 2026
| Trailing year to Q1 2026 | Capex | Of cash flow |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $151.0bn | 102% |
| Alphabet | $109.9bn | 63% |
| Microsoft | $97.2bn | 57% |
| Meta | $75.7bn | 61% |
| Four together | $433.9bn | 67% |
The four together are putting 67% of operating cash flow into property and equipment. Amazon is above 100%, which means the incremental hall is funded in the market rather than out of the business — and that is the line to watch when spreads move.
- OracleQuarter ended June 2026 · Cash capital expenditures
- $15.9bn
Outside the four-company cohort, reported separately
What this number is, and is not
Every quarterly cell is cash paid to acquire property and equipment, taken from the company’s own cash-flow statement and placed on the calendar quarter it closed. Microsoft’s fiscal year ends in June, so its quarters are aligned on the end date rather than the fiscal label. Rackline does not estimate a data-centre share of these dollars, because none of the four discloses one.
The guidance columns are not on the same basis as the quarterly table and are not added to it. Amazon and Alphabet guide cash capex; Microsoft and Meta guide a figure that includes finance leases. That is why the guided year sits above four times the latest quarter by more than growth alone explains.
The combined column is Rackline’s sum of the four filings rather than a published total. Compilers round each company before adding and land a tenth or two apart from this table.
Gas
Henry Hub
Not in the power index
Natural gas
The fuel print
Henry Hub
+0.120 on the day
Rackline index
Rackline Gas-to-Chip
GPU revenue
per MMBtu
B200 at 1000 W · $7.41/GPU-hr
251× the gas print · 30× fuel and powered space
What a MMBtu earns, by part
- H100 SXMWorkhorse · $3.87/GPU-hr · 700 W · $5.53/IT-kWh
- $591
- B200Frontier · $7.41/GPU-hr · 1,000 W · $7.41/IT-kWh
- $792
- B300Top of line · $7.85/GPU-hr · 1,400 W liquid · $5.61/IT-kWh
- $599
- Fuel as a share of the B200 ask
- 0.40%
Calculation
Five rungs. One: Henry Hub, live off the tape. Two: a 7.2 MMBtu/MWh new combined-cycle heat rate, so one MMBtu buys 138.9 kilowatt-hours at the busbar and the fuel-only generation cost is Henry Hub times 7.2 dollars per MWh. Three: a 1.30 PUE, which means 106.8 of those kilowatt-hours reach a GPU and the rest goes to cooling and losses; the same PUE puts the fuel bill on an IT-load basis at 730 hours a month. Four: the powered-space ask, weighted across JLL’s whole North American curve rather than taken from the hyperscale rung alone — each requirement band is weighted by the megawatts it represents, at the band midpoint, and at the floor for the open over-20 MW band, which gives a market ask of about $161/kW-month against $152 for large blocks. Five: the Rackline weighted GPU index divided by board TDP, which converts a dollars-per-hour print into dollars per IT kilowatt-hour. B300 is entered at 1,400 W, the liquid-cooled bin, so its dollars per kilowatt-hour are that hourly index divided by 1.4. The hourly index itself is the same cell as the GPU tape. Multiply that by the 106.8 IT kilowatt-hours a MMBtu delivers and the result is GPU revenue per MMBtu of gas. The headline runs on whichever part converts a MMBtu best, which is a question of price per watt, not price per hour. The gas multiple compares that revenue with the gas alone; the all-in multiple charges the fuel and the powered space together. This is a conversion between two live markets, not a delivered power price, not a contracted rate, and not a margin: it carries no capital cost, no network, no staff, and no utilization haircut.
The plant
What the next rack asks of the hall
NVIDIA rack note · 800 VDC note · OCP note
A liquid-cooled Blackwell hall can take Vera Rubin NVL72 on the same footprint and 45°C water. The new scope is an 800 VDC power rack in the row in the second half of 2026, then a 2 MW row bus in 2027. Kyber is the rack that leaves 54 V behind. NVIDIA’s DGX GB rack guide states about 120 kW of rack consumption. The GB300 NVL72 reference architecture states a full rack of up to 142 kW. The DSX facilities guide states a 330 kW cabinet TDP for Vera Rubin NVL72, and it scales that design point from an MGX Gen 1.1 cabinet at 198 kW. Each figure stays in the words its source used. A megawatt of that stated rack power is 8.3 GB200 racks, 7.0 GB300 racks, or 3.0 Vera Rubin racks. Kyber and Feynman have no stated kilowatt. The 2 MW figure is the row bus.
NVIDIA’s DSX example site is a 972,500 square-foot building for a 250 MW-class IT load. That reading is 3,890 square feet of building per megawatt, and 2.57 megawatts per 10,000 square feet. It is the whole building in that reference design.
Swipe to read across
Power
Real-time power index
9 live hubs · equal weight
$/MWh
$24.97–$47.77
Fuel, peak trades, and the price to compare are not in this number.
ISO hubs
In the index
ERCOT North
Dallas · real time
ERCOT West
Abilene · real time
ERCOT Houston
Houston · real time
CAISO NP15
Silicon Valley · real time
CAISO SP15
Los Angeles · real time
MISO Illinois
Central Illinois · real time
MISO Indiana
Indiana hub · real time
NYC Zone J
New York · real time
Long Island
NYISO LONGIL · real time
Peak trades
Not in the index
Price to compare
Not in the index
Credit
bp · 5-year CDS
25 September 2026. Display ceiling 300 bp, not a rating. up 16.2% on the week, bid and ask.
- Ten-year
- near 5.17%
- Issuance cited
- $4.1 trillion
The read
Oracle’s five-year CDS printed 227.15 basis points on September 25, a record, up 16.2 percent on the week in both the bid and the ask. Seeking Alpha said other hyperscaler swaps widened in the same session and did not publish the levels, so those levels are not on this page. The bar above uses a display ceiling of 300 basis points so the mark has a track. That ceiling is not a rating and not a market level.
On September 27 the ten-year Treasury sat near 5.17 percent, about 1 percentage point higher than at the start of 2026, with yields at their highest since 2007. CNBC cited JPMorgan’s June estimate of 4.1 trillion dollars of AI-related debt through 2030. CoreWeave’s June filing says each 100 basis-point rise adds about 30 million dollars of interest on its floating-rate debt. SoftBank raised 11.1 billion dollars in junk bonds the same week, the seven-year as high as 9.75 percent. Oracle’s stock was down 7 percent on the week and about 30 percent on the year; CoreWeave’s was up almost 8 percent. The cash capex of Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta is a different book.
Moratoriums
Two books, not added
Moratorium Nation · 23 September 2026
1,063In force
Local pauses on data centers, batteries, solar, wind, and crypto mining. Not a data-center-only count.
AI GridWatch · 27 September 2026
693In force
Data-center moratoriums and pushback. A different book from the one beside it.
Open a book for the grid. State actions — New York, Texas — sit on the Moratorium Nation page and are not in either count.
Major risk
Survey median, not a forecast
percent
February 2026
Mean 34.1% · interquartile 14–50%. The room already works on existential risk. The median is that survey’s, not a forecast, and not Rackline’s.
Launch
Cost per kilogram to orbit
What a space hall pays to lift a kilogram into low Earth orbit. The figure is a list price divided by a full payload, so a rocket that flies partly empty costs more per kilogram. The two desks do not print the same Falcon 9 number, and both stay.
Falcon 9
List ÷ 22,800 kg · SpaceNexus · 1 Sep 2026
Falcon 9
Maximum payload · ~$69.75M list · Orbital Radar · 28 Sep 2026
Falcon 9, reused
Reused booster, at maximum payload · Orbital Radar · 28 Sep 2026
Falcon Heavy
$97M list ÷ 63,800 kg · SpaceNexus · 1 Sep 2026
Transporter
Per kg after $350,000 for 50 kg · SpaceNexus · 2026
Rideshare
About a 50 kg minimum · Orbital Radar · 28 Sep 2026
Electron
~$7.5M list ÷ 300 kg · Orbital Radar · SpaceNexus table agrees
Space Shuttle
Program cost, 1981–2011 · Both desks
Starship has no commercial price on either desk. Orbital Radar’s design target is under $100–$200 per kilogram. SpaceNexus records a long-run goal well under $100 per kilogram, and an analyst band of $100–$500 per kilogram for mature flights. A flown price would be the point at which lift stops dominating a ground lease. Neither desk has published that price.