Registry
AI data center glossary
The vocabulary DEPLOY uses to track AI data centers, defined plainly. The distinctions here (announced versus energized, claimed versus verified) are the whole discipline: the sector has the worst announcement inflation in the economy, and precise words are how a claim stays separate from a fact.
Lifecycle stages
Where a campus sits between rumor and running. DEPLOY advances a record only on dated, sourced evidence, so the stage is a claim about progress you can check, not a vibe.
- Rumored
- Reported but unconfirmed by the developer. The weakest signal, often a single unsourced mention.
- Announced
- The developer has publicly stated intent to build, usually with a capacity figure. A claim, not construction.
- Permitted
- Zoning or construction permits are on record with the local jurisdiction.
- Financed
- Project financing or a definitive investment has been disclosed.
- Under construction
- Physical site work is underway, ideally corroborated by dated imagery.
- Partially energized
- Some capacity is drawing power and operating while the rest is still being built.
- Energized
- The campus is drawing power at its stated capacity. The stage DEPLOY treats as real.
- Stalled
- Progress has visibly halted with no cancellation announced.
- Cancelled
- The developer or owner has abandoned the project.
Capacity series
The same campus carries several capacity numbers at once. Keeping them separate is the whole point: a press release quotes the biggest one, and DEPLOY tracks the smallest true one.
- Announced capacity
- The largest capacity the developer has publicly claimed. A ceiling, not a measurement.
- Contracted capacity
- Capacity covered by a signed power or tenancy contract.
- Under-construction capacity
- Capacity with physical build work underway.
- Energized capacity
- Capacity actually drawing power. The number DEPLOY treats as real.
Evidence tiers
Every capacity figure carries a tier that says how much to trust it, so a developer's claim never renders with the same weight as a confirmed record.
- Verified
- Confirmed against a primary, first-party, or official record.
- Reported
- Sourced to credible secondary reporting, not yet primary-confirmed.
- Claimed
- Asserted by the developer or an interested party, unconfirmed.
Land status
What kind of ground the campus sits on. It shapes the permitting path, the incentives, and how fast a site can move.
- Private land
- Privately owned land.
- Federal land
- Land owned by the federal government.
- Federal DOE land
- US Department of Energy land, often a national-lab or reservation site.
- Brownfield
- A previously developed or contaminated site being reused.
- Former industrial site
- A retired industrial site, such as a shuttered power plant or factory.
Power and grid
A data center is a power project with servers attached. These are the terms that decide whether announced capacity ever becomes energized capacity.
- Grid operator (ISO / RTO)
- The independent system operator that runs the regional grid (ERCOT, PJM, MISO, and others) and its interconnection queue.
- Interconnection queue
- The waiting list to connect new load or generation to the grid. Queue position and status gate when a campus can energize.
- Behind-the-meter
- Power generated on-site, bypassing the public grid's interconnection queue.
- Announced-to-energized gap
- The difference between claimed capacity and capacity actually drawing power. DEPLOY's core metric for a sector with the worst announcement inflation in the economy.
- Homes-equivalent
- A derived comparison expressing a campus's power as households, at roughly 810,000 homes per gigawatt.
- Compute-class estimate
- A derived, order-of-magnitude figure of training compute from a sourced chip count, stated relative to a GPT-4-class run. Derived from claims, not measured.
These definitions drive the campus index and every campus record. For how each figure is verified, read the methodology.