The Data Center Revolution: Wired Real Estate Capitalizes on AI-Driven Industrial Real Estate Growth

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

18 Jun 2025

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“This is fundamentally a segment of industrial real estate with physical assets,” explains Everett Thompson, Founder and CEO of Wired Real Estate Group. “What makes it compelling is the distinctive risk-reward profile, a high-growth industry backed by tangible physical infrastructure.”

As artificial intelligence reshapes the technology landscape, data centers have emerged as one of commercial real estate’s hottest sectors. While institutional investors have flocked to the space, many smaller investors and family offices remain uncertain about how to participate in this capital-intensive asset class.

Thompson, whose career spans over two decades in the data center industry, has positioned his company at the intersection of industrial real estate and cutting-edge technology. With experience that includes early roles at industry giants Equinix and Digital Realty, Thompson brings a unique perspective on opportunities for investors looking to enter the space.

From Consultant to Powerhouse

Wired Real Estate Group began as a consultancy focused on the sell-side of data center transactions. “The vision has always been consistent,” Thompson explains. “We focus on working with the sell side of the equation—clients with land, buildings, or underperforming data centers—then productizing these assets before bringing them to market for successful exits.”

This approach has led to remarkable success stories. In 2012, Wired Real Estate was sole-sourced to Iron Mountain when their data center business was underperforming with declining revenue. “We revitalized their operations, and now it’s their largest business unit,” Thompson notes. “We closed leases worth around $70 million. They eventually bought out our pipeline and implemented two of the following three acquisitions we recommended.”

More recently, the firm was involved in what Thompson describes as “the largest interconnection agreement in ERCOT history,” a 1,000-megawatt access agreement in Texas, five times the capacity of the well-known Abilene project. After the principals foreclosed on their data center partner due to performance issues, Thompson stepped in as an investor, turned the project around, and facilitated “an exceptional exit through sale to a large cloud company.”

The Industrial Real Estate Foundation

For investors unfamiliar with data centers, Thompson emphasizes that they should be viewed fundamentally as industrial real estate assets. “Where we add significant value is at the real estate level,” he states.

The risk profile is particularly attractive because while data centers benefit from technology sector growth, they’re backed by physical assets with extraordinary longevity. “The meantime between failure of a transformer is measured in hundreds of years,” Thompson explains. “These components rarely fail, so the risk profile isn’t substantially different from other land investments.”

Even the building envelope itself presents minimal operational risk. “It’s essentially four walls and a roof,” he says. “There might be physical conduits for fiber connections, but property owners typically aren’t responsible for the fiber itself.”

This combination of high-growth potential with physical asset stability creates what Thompson describes as “a very attractive risk-reward proposition backed by real assets.”

Location Evolution: From Urban Cores to Power Hubs

A significant misconception about data centers involves their location requirements. While traditional data center REITs like Equinix and Digital Realty have focused on urban cores, Thompson notes that the industry’s growth has shifted dramatically.

“Most current data center growth isn’t occurring near urban cores,” he explains. “When you examine megawatt deployment over the last decade, development has increasingly moved to remote locations.”

He points to examples like Microsoft’s significant presence in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and both Microsoft and Google’s investments near Council Bluffs, Iowa—reportedly “the number one destination for NVIDIA GPUs in North America currently.”

This shift represents a fundamental change in location attractiveness. “The new opportunity centers on proximity to electrical infrastructure clusters rather than urban cores,” Thompson says. “With access to appropriate power infrastructure, you can achieve an attractive risk-reward profile despite more remote locations.”

The Three Keys to Competitive Data Center Investments

For investors evaluating potential data center opportunities, Thompson identifies three critical factors that determine a project’s competitiveness:

1. Tax Environment: “This is the foundation,” Thompson emphasizes. “Nearly every North American community offers tax incentives to attract investment.” A positive tax environment where operators aren’t facing additional equipment purchase taxes is essential.
2. Power Costs: “The average industrial power cost in the United States is between seven and eight cents per kilowatt-hour,” Thompson notes. “The further below that benchmark, the better your competitive position.” Power costs represent a significant operational expense for data centers, making favorable rates a major advantage.
3. Unique Value Proposition: “Simply presenting an opportunity isn’t sufficient,” Thompson states. “You must offer something distinctive.” This is where Thompson’s expertise in understanding buyer psychology becomes crucial.

For their current projects, Wired Real Estate has developed what Thompson calls “distributed, redundant, micro-grid architecture” that adds competitive differentiation to their projects.

The AI Data Center Challenge

The rise of artificial intelligence has created new challenges for data center operations, particularly around power management. “The load-following challenges of AI data centers are well documented,” Thompson explains, referring to the difficulties in managing variable power demands of AI workloads.

Wired Real Estate’s approach involves “relocating generators and batteries outside the building envelope and positioning them between the grid and the data center for industrial-scale reliability and load following.”

This strategy delivers multiple benefits, including “capital expenditure avoidance and lower energy costs that we demonstrate to prospective occupiers.”

The Investment Opportunity

With traditional real estate sectors facing headwinds, data centers represent an attractive alternative for investors. However, the capital-intensive nature of these projects can be daunting for smaller players.

Thompson sees this as an opportunity. “We’re consistently told there aren’t many platforms like Wired Real Estate for investors to engage with,” he says. “Investors seek a steady hand and repeatable process, which is precisely our approach.”

The company’s platform has become what Thompson describes as a “flywheel” that is “infinitely financeable in the current market.” With significant capital pursuing qualified platforms, Thompson believes there’s room for investors of various sizes to participate.

“Despite being capital-intensive, I encourage interested stakeholders to engage, as there’s always an appropriate entry point where they can participate,” he notes.

Looking to the Future

As the data center industry evolves, Thompson emphasizes the importance of forward-thinking strategies. “Our perspective is to anticipate industry direction,” he says, noting that cryptocurrency infrastructure has generated “innovative concepts” influencing their approach.

Wired Real Estate has adopted what Thompson calls a “power-first strategy” with on-site generation as their base case. He cautions potential investors: “Be wary of opportunities that don’t integrate data center facilities, on-site generation, and grid connections, as that integration represents the industry’s future direction.”

With memorandums of understanding in negotiation for approximately 15 gigawatts of capacity in the United States alone, plus additional projects in Latin America and Europe, Wired Real Estate is positioned at the forefront of the data center revolution. For investors seeking participation in this rapidly growing sector, Thompson’s blend of industrial real estate fundamentals with technological innovation offers a compelling entry point into what has traditionally been a challenging market to access.