35 GW Pre-Leased, 107-Week Lead Times, Zero Margin for Error

JLL's latest numbers frame the scale of what's coming: 35 GW under construction across North America, 92% already pre-leased, and Texas accounting for 6.5 GW of that pipeline. Enough, potentially, to dethrone Northern Virginia as the continent's top datacenter market by 2030. But the delivery window is 2027-2028, and the bottlenecks aren't theoretical. Stargate's air permits reveal a supply chain running through Chinese-owned Baudouin engines with 107-week lead times from alternative manufacturers. Hood County commissioners vote Tuesday on whether to defy their own county attorney and pursue a datacenter moratorium that state lawmakers have already signaled won't survive legal challenge. And Sam Altman's dismissal of water concerns as "completely untrue, totally insane" lands the same week Houston Advanced Research Center projections show Texas datacenter water consumption could hit 161 billion gallons annually by 2030. The gap between what's been pre-leased and what can actually be built, powered, cooled, and permitted is where the real story lives.