Backplane

For Property Owners

Turn a Powered Industrial Site Into an AI Data Center Lease

AI compute buyers need powered sites faster than the market can supply them. If you own a large industrial property with existing or accessible power — retired, idled, or simply underused — it may be one of the more valuable pieces of real estate you didn't know you had.

Why this market exists right now

AI training and inference demand has outpaced how fast hyperscalers and utilities can build new capacity. The binding constraint isn't chips — it's power and the time it takes to interconnect a new site to the grid, which can run into years in many markets.

That makes any property with existing power infrastructure — even if it hasn't run in years — genuinely scarce. A closed factory with a live substation, or a retired plant with transmission-level interconnection, can bypass most of that queue entirely.

What qualifies as a powered site

We evaluate a wide range of property types. The common thread isn't the industry that used to operate there — it's the power position and physical footprint left behind.

  • Retired power plants — see our dedicated page on why these work especially well
  • Former aluminum smelters and other extremely power-intensive former industrial uses
  • Closed paper mills, with existing power and water infrastructure
  • Shuttered manufacturing and industrial plants generally
  • Decommissioned crypto-mining facilities, already built for dense compute power delivery
  • Closed big-box retail, malls, and campuses with meaningful power service and footprint

What we actually look for

Four things drive whether a site is viable: existing or realistically accessible utility power, a large contiguous footprint, clear site control (owned or under option), and a plausible timeline to energization. Sites that check most of these boxes are worth a conversation — we don't require every box checked before we'll take a look.

How the deal works

You retain ownership. We evaluate the site's power and interconnection position, match it against real, committed compute demand, and bring in a financing partner who funds the buildout — the GPUs, the racking, the power infrastructure work. The site becomes a contracted, income-generating asset rather than a carrying cost. For the full walkthrough of each stage, see how it works.

What your site could be worth

Valuation depends heavily on power capacity, interconnection timeline, location, and structural condition — there's no universal number, and we won't pretend otherwise. What we can tell you quickly, usually within one conversation, is whether a site is in the range worth pursuing and what the likely deal structure looks like.