More than 80% of North American data center capacity under construction is already pre-leased, CBRE reported in leasing data published this week, up from 74% a year earlier and far above the 40% to 50% historical norm. Tenants are bidding for compute capacity that has not been energized, a signal that demand for AI infrastructure continues to run ahead of physical supply.
According to Zero Hedge, the pre-leasing wave extends across single-site order books as well as aggregate market data. Singapore-based Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) has converted that demand into roughly $2.9 billion in expected AI cloud revenue backlog across three Malaysian facilities, none of which have switched on yet.
Bitdeer's order book: $2.9 billion before energization
Bitdeer AI's commitments stack up site by site. In August, the company secured five-year offtake commitments for all of A102, a 9.5MW facility in Malaysia, representing more than $800 million in total expected revenue. The site is scheduled to energize in early 2027.
A201, a 21.7MW liquid-cooled facility in Johor Bahru, followed. On September 14, Bitdeer said talks were at an advanced stage. Fifteen days later it announced offtake commitments covering more than 70% of the site, worth more than $1.7 billion over five years. Energization is scheduled for the first quarter of 2027.
Earlier in September, Bitdeer had already secured A202, an additional 65.1MW on the same campus, under a 10-year data center services agreement expected to energize in the third quarter of 2027. That lifts Bitdeer AI's secured capacity to approximately 206.5MW, about 59% of its target of up to 350MW by the first quarter of 2028.
Demand for liquid-cooled, rack-scale capacity in 2027, Chief Financial Officer Michael G. Potter said, is running well ahead of what the market can supply.
Longer contracts, larger commitments
Some commitments extend well beyond the standard five-year horizon. In August, Bitdeer announced a 16-year lease for its Tydal campus in Norway with a base contract value of approximately $4.7 billion. The tenant plans to fill 121MW of IT capacity with Nvidia GPUs for an unnamed AI lab.
The duration matters as much as the size. Sixteen-year contracts shift the risk model from speculative buildout to contracted cash flow, closer to infrastructure debt than venture exposure.
Capital allocation follows contracted demand
Bitdeer says its GPU investment strategy follows contracted demand rather than forecasts. The company develops capacity consistent with contracted demand and deploys GPU capital against executed contracts. It generally seeks customer prepayments covering more than half of the associated capital spending, alongside operating cash flow and financing secured against contracted cash flows.
For A201, Bitdeer has already procured more than 100 racks of Nvidia GB300 NVL72 systems ahead of energization. Part of the site is designed for Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin platform, which the company says lets one site serve customers across multiple platform generations.
Pipeline versus backlog: a useful distinction
Bitdeer separates what is contracted from what is under discussion. Its estimated active AI cloud pipeline grew from more than $2 billion in mid-August to more than $10 billion by the end of September. The company is explicit that this figure is management's estimate of the potential value of deals under discussion, not backlog or revenue.
Bitdeer AI expects to contract A202 ahead of energization, as it did with A102.
Does pre-leasing settle the bubble debate?
It does not. What it does establish is that customers are committing capital to capacity before it comes online, and that the scarce asset is capacity with power already attached. For now, customers are the ones waiting.
The broader financing context remains contested. Business Insider reported that Amazon is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers, servers, and power before investors know how quickly those investments will generate revenue. Forbes noted that J.P. Morgan's AI report found only about 6 gigawatts of data center capacity currently under construction in major U.S. markets. Fortune reported that Wall Street is debating whether the latest AI bubble warnings are another head fake, with the current anxiety centered on whether trillions in AI spending will pay off sufficiently.
Contract structure offers partial protection. A Substack analysis argued that many contracts for data centers currently under construction have been written specifically to prevent abandonment if the AI bubble bursts. Prepayments and long-dated offtake agreements function as collateral: they bind both sides before the first kilowatt flows.
The next test for Bitdeer is execution: delivering A102, A201, and A202 on schedule in 2027, and converting commitments into revenue and cash flow. The market has already voted on demand. Delivery is the remaining variable.
FAQ
What percentage of North American data center capacity under construction is pre-leased?
More than 80%, according to CBRE, up from 74% a year earlier and well above the 40% to 50% historical norm.
How large is Bitdeer AI's expected revenue backlog?
Approximately $2.9 billion, comprising A102 (more than $800 million over five years), A201 (more than $1.7 billion over five years), and a 10-year agreement for A202.
When will Bitdeer's Malaysian facilities energize?
A102 is scheduled for early 2027, A201 for the first quarter of 2027, and A202 for the third quarter of 2027.
Is the $10 billion AI pipeline the same as backlog?
No. Bitdeer states the figure is management's estimate of the potential value of deals under discussion, not contracted backlog or revenue.