Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NUAI Business Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lincoln Tan, Investor Relations for New Era. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. My name is Lincoln Tan, Investor Relations for New Era. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter fiscal 2025 business update call. Joining me today are Will Gray, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Charlie Nelson, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Ted Warner, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded and will be available on the investor relations section of our website. Following management's prepared remarks, we will address questions submitted by participants through the webcast platform, time permitting. I'd also like to note that today's prepared remarks will be somewhat longer than usual.
With our expanded executive team now in place, including Charlie and Ted participating in their first business update call with the company, management will take additional time to provide a more comprehensive overview of the business, recent developments across the platform, and how they are thinking about strategy and execution going forward following what has been a period of significant transition and activity across the entire organization. Please note that during the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views and expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. We encourage listeners not to place undue reliance on these statements and to review the disclaimer on slide two of the accompanying presentation for additional information. With that, I'll turn the call over to Will Gray.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Before I begin, I just wanna be direct about, you know, what this call is about and what it isn't. This is not just an earnings recap, the 10-K's filed. The numbers are public, and we can all read them. You know, what this call is about is something more fundamental. We're gonna walk through what New Era Energy & Digital actually is, how we're building it, and why we believe we're positioned to be a defining platform in AI infrastructure development. A lot of investors still associate us with our former life as New Era Helium. Trust me, that chapter is closed. We're not gonna talk about it again. What we're building now is fundamentally different, and we owe it to our shareholders to explain it clearly.
Looking at slide two, you know, let's just talk about the disclaimers. You know, I just wanna remind everyone that today's presentation does include forward-looking statements and is subject to the disclaimers shown here and detailed as well in our SEC filings. I would encourage everyone to review those carefully, please. Going on to slide three, I just really wanna make some introductions on the two individuals who are essentially critical to the next phase of this company, and they have been critical since day one, Charlie has. You know, and so many of you are familiar with Charlie Nelson, and Charlie has been with me really since day one, since we went public as an independent board member.
Charlie Nelson is now our President and Chief Operating Officer and officially joined us in the executive capacity in January after stepping in from an independent position, you know, last July, to really help me with the transition into the digital infrastructure. You know, as Charlie has mentioned, he spent his career building and scaling large energy and industrial infrastructure platforms, pipelines, gas processing, power terminals, fuels, GTLs. You know, he's overseeing more than a billion dollars in infrastructure projects. Charlie is the person who knows how to take a complex multi-party infrastructure development and actually deliver it. You know, he's gonna be walking us through the technical heart of what we're building today.
Essentially, you know, what Charlie and I have been able to accomplish thus far is the real reason why the next introduction is so pivotal 'cause it's about execution. A nd very pleased to introduce our new CFO, Ted Warner, who again recently joined us as Chief Financial Officer effective today. It's amazing 'cause Ted brings, you know, 20 years of infrastructure and energy capital markets experience. Formerly, he was the head of energy and power and digital infrastructure at Northland, where, as an investment banker at Northland, he led more than $7 billion in data center infrastructure financing, literally in the last two years alone, so quite impressive. You know, all structured capital solutions specifically for AI and HPC infrastructure.
When we talk about our financing strategy, you know, that is the GP-LP structures, you know, project level capital formation. You know, Ted is the individual who's done this at scale for his entire career across energy and now large scale, you know, greenfield HPC data centers. Ted will definitely be speaking as to our financing strategy later in this presentation, but definitely wanna welcome Ted to the team as he's gonna be quite instrumental in getting us to where we all need to go here on our execution model. Really kinda wanna just dive right into kind of, you know, the industry landscape and growth drivers. Really wanna explain, you know, what we're actually building here at NUAI, because I think this is the part that most investors really haven't kind of grasped yet.
It's the most important thing I'm gonna have to say today. You know, I want you to think about what happened during the shale revolution in oil and gas, and that was the upstream companies, you know, they produced the hydrocarbons. Refineries, you know, consumed them. But in between, there was a massive infrastructure build-out, which essentially was attributed to the pipeline companies, you know, the processing companies, you know, Kinder Morgan, the Williams Companies, MarkWest, et cetera. You know, those midstream companies didn't produce a single barrel of oil, and they didn't consume the gas. You know, what they did was build the infrastructure that connected the supply to the demand. That infrastructure sector became a $500 billion industry. Here's a critical point. It was spun out from vertically integrated, you know, super majors due to a very specific, you know, financing engine.
You know, project-level financing, GP-LP structure, asset-level debt secured against long-term contracted cash flow. You know, the midstream company acted as the general partner, the developer, the originator, the operator, institutional capital, you know, PE funds, pension funds, infrastructure funds, sovereign wealth. You know, they provide the project capital as limited partners. So the developers earn the fees, equity participation, you know, and co-invest alongside the LPs. The institutional investors, you know, get contracted infrastructure returns, and that model has financed hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure over the last three decades. Essentially, what NUAI is doing is we're applying that exact playbook, but to AI. Again, we don't manufacture chips. We don't run AI models. We don't operate GPU clouds. You know, we build the power infrastructure, which is the land, the power, the buildings.
You know, that sits between the energy supply and the compute demand. Essentially, we are the midstream of the AI economy, and we finance it the same way. You know, NUAI is the general partner and developer, as well as the opportunistic investor. Project-level capital, you know, debt and equity from institutional infrastructure investors that funds the build. The tenant's balance sheet, not NUAI's, is what the lenders ultimately underwrite. This is not speculative. You know, this is how large-scale infrastructure has been financed for decades, and this is what we're essentially, you know, going to copy, paste, and do it again. Now, let's look at the demand side of the story because this is something, you know, most of you are already familiar with. I don't want to spend too much time here, but there are several points worth underscoring.
You know, first, hyperscaler demand for data center capacity continues to accelerate. The numbers on this slide, you know, simply tell the story. Projected CapEx exceeding $350 billion in 2025. You know, that global capacity expected to quadruple by 2030. I mean, that's a substantial amount. Here's the second point, and this is the one that actually matters for our business, for NUAI. The constraint isn't demand. Everyone know that's there. You know, the real constraint is power. In every major data center market in the country today, you know, timely access to large-scale, reliable power has become the gating factor for new deployments. Grid interconnection queues are stretching to three, four, five years plus. You know, utilities are issuing notice to serve letters telling applicants, you know, you asked for a gigawatt, here's 400 megs.
We'll let you know when we can provide more. You know, that dynamic is exactly where NUAI plays. You know, we develop campuses where power infrastructure is designed and delivered alongside the data center itself. You know, behind the meter plus grid, not just grid. I think that's important to note. You know, on-site, purpose-built for hyperscale AI workloads. The constraint is power, and that's where NUAI comes in. Charlie, why don't you know, kind of looking at the next slide, Charlie, here on slide five. You know, why don't you, if you don't mind, kind of take over and kind of give your thoughts here.
Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Will. Let me briefly walk you through, like, the company that we've built and kind of the execution machine that we have built to do all this. Our development model rests on four pillars. First is differentiated site sourcing. Historically speaking, data centers have been pretty straightforward. You basically looked at the intersection of power, that's like medium to high voltage power lines. You know, fiber was a must, like, right on-site, basically ample water supply because most people use evaporative cooling historically. You know, that worked great for 30 to 50 MW data centers, which was very large three years ago. You know, moving into these larger scale ones, you know, even some gigawatts plus, it just broke the mold. The new paradigm is dramatically different. Fiber proximity is less important.
You know, it's less important because you can build long-haul, last-mile fiber that basically costs the same for a 30 MW data center as it does for a gigawatt data center. The cost is spread out over, you know, a larger amount of megawatt. Water is kind of an afterthought. It's not, you know, completely gone, but everything's closed-looped. You know, we use direct-to-chip cooling. It's less important than it used to be, but it's still a must. The big thing is power, and power is the wild card. Grids everywhere are constrained to get data centers built on time. You know, all of these utilities are so overwhelmed right now that, you know, our position is that you effectively have to build your own.
You know, all this leads to, you know, our development model. You know, we chose TCDC, which was riddled with pipeline easements, active pipelines, all sorts of things. You know, those to a normal developer would look undevelopable. You know, our group, given the fact that, you know, we have done all these things, we've built pipelines, we've moved them, et cetera, it's allowed us to basically play money ball with sites that otherwise are very well-positioned but hard to develop and take undevelopable Cs and turn them into As. Second, you know, we have a coordinated execution ecosystem. We don't build everything ourselves. These are massive projects, especially when you're building your own power.
We work with best-in-class partners across power generation, engineering, modular manufacturing, and construction, et cetera. You know, we've migrated towards factory-built components, which reduce on-site labor requirements, which is huge in this market where, you know, at these large scales, you know, if there's 10 of these things being built across the country, where each of them require, you know, 5,000-10,000 contractors on site at the same time, we just don't have the contracting capacity in this country to do that effectively at the same time. Our basic move into this modular manufacturing has allowed us to, and will allow us to, compress timelines and more effectively execute on the projects that we're doing. Third, you know, as Will mentioned, you know, we've deployed a capital-efficient GP-LP structure.
You know, this lowers balance sheet requirements, lowers dilution versus traditional development, because institutional capital will fund the build at the project level. You know, Ted will touch on this a little bit more later. Fourth, you know, everything that we're talking about here is a repeatable development platform. Standardized frameworks that get faster and better with every single project we do. TCDC is project one, but the platform, and that comes with the partnerships, the playbook, the financing model, the permits, the execution, all of that is designed to support a lot of campuses over time, so we can copy and paste. Will, I'll let you take the next one.
Yeah, 'cause now, you know, Charlie, this is one thing that we've touched on a number of times is, you know, why we're here, right? You know, solving the core constraints. That's really, you know, behind the meter, plus grid, you know, versus, you know, grid only. I really want to spend some time, you know, talking about that, the single most important thing for this audience, right? That's to understand about our business. You know, why, you know, behind the meter power it's not just a niche strategy. You know, it's becoming the default for hyperscale AI infrastructure. You know, I'd love to explain why, because we've been here and demonstrated this a number of times why this is so important.
You know, so when we talk to hyperscale customers, you know, we spend a lot of time in their conference rooms, you know, just articulating a very, you know, clear priority stack. That's speed to power is first. Reliability, unfortunately, is second. You know, cost is third. You know, if we got the other two, you know, that's not our framing, but, you know, that's what customers tell us directly. You know, obviously, again, speed, reliability, cost. Let's take those, you know, really one at a time, because I want to kind of dive through those and dissect them so that the audience has a really good understanding of where we're coming from. You know, obviously, the most important is speed. I think we all understand, you know, about the grid interconnections.
Today they're measured in three to five year, you know, increments, and that's really come on a good day, assuming you have the capacity you ask for. You know, whether it's ISOs or, you know, ERCOT, PJM, you know, every major grid network in the country, I mean, is so stressed, and unfortunately, it's getting worse. When you hear companies, you know, cite to multi-gigawatt campus plans, we kind of ask ourselves, you know, where's this power at? Where's this coming from? And if the answer is the grid, then they're waiting in line with everyone else. You know, behind-the-meter power can be deployed in, you know, 12 to 24 months. You know, it's not a marginal advantage, it's complete different competitive position. That's where NUAI has really kind of just, you know, planted our flag.
That's what we're doing with our first asset here in the Permian. Again, you know, not just speed, but reliability. You know, interesting fact here, you know, you just can't build a power plant and plug it into a data center and expect it to, you know, execute, you know, perfectly. It doesn't work that way. The two don't match up. When the market demands, you know, five nines of reliability, you know, and that takes the nuance to get it done, you know, we've developed a method to do so. Of course, you know, cost. You know, three or four years ago, you know, you could buy grid power in Texas at, you know, $45 per MWh. You know, today, open bids are $85-$95.
You know, grid power is getting more expensive, you know, because utilities are funding massive grid upgrades. Unfortunately, those upgrades are getting passed, those T&D charges are getting passed through to the ratepayers, so transmission and distribution charges. You know, that's a real number that consumers are seeing each day. You know, a lot of those jurisdictions are looking at adding, you know, a data center subcharge, you know, to the larger load clients. It's only, you know, it's only gonna get worse from here on out. We're approaching a cost curve where behind-the-meter is cheaper than grid. Again, you know, behind-the-meter costs are relatively static. You know what your gas costs, you know what your capital recovery charge is, you know what your operating costs are.
The convergence between behind-the-meter and grid pricing is real. We believe, you know, parity is not far off in many markets. Then there's the mention most people just aren't talking about, and that's really the social license to operate. You know, whether that be Texas Senate Bill 6, you know, new regulations in Ohio, PJM reforms. You know, all these responses are the fact that you cannot be a parasitic load on the grid. You have to have community support. You have to have regulatory support. And that means, you know, reducing what you consume from the grid and bringing your own power. You know, Meta just announced behind-the-meter. Vantage announced a major behind-the-meter deal with Liberty Energy. You know, our thesis is not alone in isolation. The entire industry is moving this direction.
You know, New Era Energy & Digital saw this early, and we designed around it. Charlie, you know, based upon that, let's talk about how we designed around that, because you were instrumental in taking that baton and really kind of carrying it forward. I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on that.
Yeah, for sure. You know, just talking about the development life cycle of a campus. You know, our campuses are supported by these platform-level execution partnerships that we've talked about before. You know, we've got some established, and this is a growing ecosystem that we have, but we've got partners like Ramboll, RK Mission Critical, Thunderhead, ZeroIntensity, et cetera. You know, like, beyond the more mechanical parts of what we do in the development process, which is really around, you know, originating, structuring, coordinating, and executing, what we really wanna highlight today is what, you know, we can do that, you know, most can't, just because it's relatively not straightforward and it's not easy. But I think it's best illustrated in an example of what we've done at TCDC.
What we do is we take, you know, sites that are embedded in active energy corridors. Sites and these are not necessarily the prettiest ones. These could be greenfield, these could be brownfield. You know, they may have active stuff on them. They may have some blemishes that we have to rectify, things like, you know, abandoned infrastructure, environmental complexity, et cetera. You know, we convert them into powered hyperscale-grade campuses. You know, like, look at what we did with TCDC, for example. TCDC had wells on the property. They had abandoned wells, abandoned pipelines on the property. You know, all of these things, these surface conditions, are typically something that, you know, in the low-hanging fruit matrix, it is not the easiest thing to do.
These locations are key for a lot of reasons. They've got, you know, redundant pipelines, for example, that we can build power plants that have high reliability on them. They've got multiple power lines. They've got a lot of the ingredients that we like. This is something, you know, again, like traditional, you know, traditional data center development wouldn't take a look at this and say, "Oh, this is a fantastic site." We didn't walk away, you know. We knew how to convert it. What did we do? You know, we relocated the pipelines. You know, we've had to negotiate with midstream operators to do that. We've had to coordinate shutdowns. We've had to go through, you know, additional permits, et cetera. We've had to remediate stuff.
How do we do that? You know, so far, you know, we've completed soil sampling. We've done environmental assessments. We've done clearing. We've done grading. You know, we've removed this infrastructure, and we've basically brought it back to kinda baseline. This isn't traditionally what data center companies do. This is very common for what energy infrastructure companies do. You know, that is at the core of what we've done historically. You know, all of this requires a very specific kind of operator who kind of straddles the fence between the energy world and the digital infrastructure world, which is a pretty rare combination. You know, this is a fundamental insight that we want you to take away.
Like, in a world where AI compute is growing exponentially, the supply of viable power line land sites is growing linearly. Frankly, you know, there's more, you know, more noise than signal in this sector trying to find where is the best place to build and where is the next best place to build. You know, what we could do is, you know, we can take sites that are very well positioned but may not be, you know, perfectly buildable day one and turn them into, this is going back to what I said before, turn Cs and Bs into A+. That's what we do. You know, we're not competing for, you know, these existing sites 'cause frankly, you know, they're becoming fewer and far between. We're just making new ones.
By doing so, it enables us to build in extremely advantageous areas that most would overlook because it's not the easiest path forward.
Yeah. Charlie-
Will, I'm gonna hand it back to you.
Yeah. It's well said, Charlie. You know, 'cause so when you look at, you know, starting here on slide eight, which is our multi-campus, you know, and our multi gigawatt platform, you know, this slide really kinda outlines our broader development pipeline. You know, obviously with Texas Critical Data Centers, that's our flagship campus in Ector County, you know, heart of the Permian Basin. It's a one plus gig under active development. You know, we've also kind of touched on our New Mexico campus in Lea County. Again, over in New Mexico. It's a longer term, you know, multi-gigawatt opportunity that's really in early planning, you know, with engineering work underway. I wanna be disciplined, you know, about expectations here.
You know, right now our core focus is on advancing, you know, Texas, you know, our TCDC asset, you know, towards full commercialization. Please know, you know, everything we do, every partnership, you know, every engineering decision, every capital conversation, it's truly oriented around being designed to be repeatable. You know, this is a platform that Charlie and I built to rinse and repeat. Again, you know, this was designed, you know, TCDC is just asset number one. We have a number of other assets that are ready to be spun up, but we want execution done on TCDC first and foremost. Once that's COD, then we're off to the races. Again, please note that all of our sites are very real. New Mexico is real.
You know, the site characteristics are extremely suitable for the AI, you know, AI data center deployment. You know, which are, of course, you know, all the necessary items. You know, of course, proximity to water, fiber, labor, major gas transmission lines, you know, all of the things that are needed for behind-the-meter, speed to power and, of course, you know, reliability. Of course, you know, with our New Mexico asset, you know, we have commenced some engineering work on that. But it's for future deployment, you know, for the platform. It's not our near-term priority. Our near-term priority is execution on TCDC and deliverability there of our gigawatt plus site. But Charlie, let's talk about that. Speaking about our flagship campus, I'm gonna hand it over to you here on slide 9.
Yeah, for sure. Just talking through TCDC, you know, it's an absolute gem, right? TCDC, you know, sits on what was 438 acres, now we're up to 492. This site, you know, sits right next to two major power plants. One's, Vistra's Ector County Generating Station, which is roughly 1.1 gigs. Right next to Calpine's Quail Run so which is roughly 550 megs. You know, why does that matter? You know, again, there's existing POIs nearby, points of interconnection. You know, there's a reason why they built those plants there. There's three natural gas transmission systems operated by three separate companies.
One's operated by ONEOK, one's operated by Enterprise, and one's operated by a group called WhiteWater. Why does that matter? Well, you know, gas pipelines, you know, they go down. You know, in the data center world, we need, traditionally five nines of reliability is the, you know, the gold standard. To get to five nines of reliability, you can't just operate off of one pipeline, 'cause pipelines go down. You know, they go down for maintenance, things like that. You know, if a pipeline goes down for maintenance, guess what? Your data center goes dark if it's running off those pipes. We've got three physically diverse sources, from three separate operators.
You know, we can maintain continuous supply and, you know, that's kind of a Goldilocks situation for a behind-the-meter application, because it's not just about the equipment, it's about the supply of the materials that run that equipment. Obviously having, you know, redundancy on gas supply is critical. You know, we talk about fiber, and this is just going back to, you know, more of the ingredients in the data center soup. You know, fiber connectivity is great here. There's fiber that runs along the I-20 corridor, and for those who don't know, like, fiber runs along most major interstate corridors. And this connects to major hubs between Dallas, El Paso, et cetera. Being able to tap right into that just makes our lives a lot easier.
That's just one more, you know, one more notch in the belt of the site. Water, building codes, workforce, regulatory, et cetera, these are all very favorable for this. The site is, you know, not in the middle of nowhere. It's in an area that has historically built hard things in the oil and gas space. There is a level of familiarity nearby, both in terms of the regulatory bodies, as well as the workforce, that allows us to basically build this with greater ease. Additionally, we've initiated an industrial district designation with the city of Odessa, which gives us access to municipal water, wastewater should we need it.
You know, a lot of what we've been doing on this site is, you know, as mentioned before, it's not just all of the, you know, relocating of pipelines, et cetera. It's just a lot of the basic stuff that goes along with development. That's land acquisition, consolidation, you know, commercial negotiation, site clearing, you know, soil samples, civil engineering. You know, building something of this scale takes a lot of things. We've just been knocking all those items out. You know, again, we'll continue to communicate that going forward. You know, kind of moving on to the next thing, and we're super excited to kind of talk about this.
You know, again, we're talking about, you know, the complexity here is actually the moat. Our power development plan to TCDC is phased into three stages. Initial phase is gonna be roughly 200 MW. Phase I is a build to suit development, leveraging existing generation and grid interconnection. Phase II is an additional 450 MW that we've announced behind-the-meter. Phase III will be the balance of that power, and that's gonna be a combination of bidirectional interconnect as well as additional behind-the-meter generation.
You know, all of that is going to be phased in, and we can talk about that, you know, at a later date exactly, you know, what that looks like. You know, while we're touching on this, I mean, let's touch on the power systems. Like, you know, how do these things actually work? Because this is, you know, kind of a black box for most people. Just to kind of give a little bit deeper dive into this, you know, we're using what are called simple-cycle gas turbines. You know, most people hear, you know, gas-fired power plants or whatever, and you think of a, you know, large combined cycle power plant. Combined cycle plants are great.
They're super efficient, but, you know, they do have a critical flaw, if you're just plugging a combined cycle plant into a data center. It doesn't work like that. You can't throttle them quickly. You know, a combined cycle plant's kind of like an ocean liner. It's slow to turn. You can't throttle it up and down as easily. Simple cycles operate more like jet engines. You know, you can ramp them up, you can ramp them down. It happens fast. You could black start them fast. There's, you know, there's a lot of benefits, to using these and coupling these in this application, versus, you know, what would, you know, a traditional power developer would look at and say, "Hey, let's build the most, you know, the most heat.
What's called heat-rate-efficient plant. You know, this is not what we were trying to do. What we were doing is matching the equipment to the application. You know, on that, you know, this is. There's this misconception that data centers are these stable loads. It's like, "Hey, we're gonna build a gigawatt data center." That does not mean that a data center is going to be consuming a gigawatt all day, every day. That's not how that works. Depending on the application, you know, these data centers, you know, they can be jagged, they can be seasonal. You know, there is variability in them, and inference is different than cloud, it is different than AI training.
While there is some stability in those things, you know, compared to, like, residential loads, you know, they are, you know, far from just like, "Hey, we're gonna plug this in, and it's gonna be consuming the same amount of power every day." That's just not how these things work. Really what we've done is designed a system for behind-the-meter that works with the application. We've designed a system that sits, you know, in between the behind-the-meter, the substation, and the grid interconnection, the eventual grid interconnection that all operate kind of automatically. We're talking chip-level communication, you know, that basically can communicate with the, you know, the energy system.
You know, basically, when the data center load drops, you know, excess power can either be routed to storage, can be, you know, eventually, when we have a bidirectional interconnect, it can go back on the grid, or it can communicate to effectively, you know, turn down these units, the power units, when, you know, when the power goes down. Sorry, when the power demand goes down. You know, these bidirectional interconnects are a different animal. You know, we believe that they are the best way to interact with the grid. If the name isn't immediately descriptive, a bidirectional interconnect is an interconnect with the grid on which you can take power off the grid or put power back onto the grid.
You know, we believe that this is kind of the wave of the future. You know, it's one of these situations that turns us into a you know, a non-parasitic load. It's not just you know, hey, we're asking the grid to you know, provide us power. This also allows us to export excess power back to ERCOT and back to other grids in the event that there's a you know, a major weather event like Uri that happened back in 2021. In the context of you know, all these new regulations that are coming into place that are really aimed at trying to have the you know, the data centers be a more community-focused ecosystem, a bidirectional interconnect is an easy way to do that.
You know, again, behind the meter is not just like, "Hey, let's build a big power plant and plug it into the building." It's, you know, it's just not how this works. You know, you'll end up bringing equipment. You know, it doesn't function properly in the application. The way that we've gone about doing this is what we believe to be, you know, the right way forward in terms of, you know, designing your equipment scheme to actually work in the context of the, you know, of the application that it's existing in. Kind of moving on to the next slide, and this is, you know, this is gonna be a new one for just about everyone here.
You know, one thing that we are doing, you know, as we've gone through this, what we've identified is a very critical weakness, you know, industry-wide, is the. I mentioned this earlier. You know, these large data centers take an enormous amount of labor. They are, you know. While data centers are not incredibly complex, I mean, it's just a big box filled with computers that cools those computers effectively. You know, the problem is that those large computers take enormous amounts of electrical labor to actually execute on them. You know, what we keep seeing thematically over and over and over again and learning from our peers is those are.
You know, you can only build so many of these at the same time before you stress the labor pool until it breaks, or until basically you're just, you know, bidding for labor that doesn't exist. What's the answer to that? Our belief is the answer to this is standardization and modularization. We are excited to announce what we are calling the ATOM platform. ATOM is our standardized data center platform. This is gonna be the first of a couple manifestations of this. The ATOM platform is a 25 MW base unit, and if you know, feel like going and flipping back to the slide before, you can zoom in on those buildings and kind of see how they're divided up. You know, each of those units is 25 MW.
Those 25 megawatt units can be stacked side by side. Basically, you can adjust the number of units in parallel to effectively come up with whatever capacity you need for that particular building. It's pretty straightforward to be perfectly frank, and what it allows us to do is reduce our on-site labor by about 80%, as it's being projected today. Most of this is constructed in a controlled manufacturing environment and then shipped to site for final integration. Historically speaking, data centers have been what's called stick-built. Stick-built in the context of major construction means that, like, you basically ship all the materials to site, and you build it on-site.
Modular means that you build it in a factory and ship it and then just, you know, plug it in. What does this do? You know, again, it enables us to do things faster, cheaper, more effectively, and control our costs. You know, as mentioned before, you know, we've partnered with a group called RK Mission Critical, who is a U.S. based manufacturer with the vast majority of their manufacturing base existing in Denver, Colorado. They've been in business for 65 years. They've got about 1 million sq ft of production space, over 2,000 employees, and they also are vertically integrated all the way through their own steel manufacturing. You know, we selected them for, you know, their expertise.
They've been delivering modular components in the past and, you know, for far smaller scale data centers, and we believe that, you know, they've got the expertise to really, you know, make a difference for our company and allow us to execute efficiently, and on time and on budget. You know, again, going back to, you know, why are we doing this? It really just comes down to, you know, copy and paste.
You know, Will's example of the midstream industry that he gave before, you know, I cut my teeth in the midstream space during the boom between 2010 to 2014. The only reason why the midstream industry was able to execute so efficiently on its build-out was because they standardized on a plant design for gas processing. It was 200 million standard cu ft per day of design. You want a, you know, basically like 1 billion cu f t of gas processing, you install five, 200 million a day cryos. You didn't install 1 billion cu f t a day cryo.
You know, these things really enabled an industry to grow at a very rapid pace and execute on time and on budget. That's just absolutely critical. You know, again, going back to our energy roots, we're kind of adopting a similar principle of copy and paste manufacturing, 'cause it's something that, you know, we believe, you know, going forward, for this scale, smaller scale and larger scale is going to be the way to go. Now, I know that we've, you know, hit on this, quite a bit, but, you know, I can't really, express how important the partnership ecosystem is to us, in terms of execution. Mainly because, you know, historically speaking, you know, that's how we found success in the past.
You know, if you try to take on too much and boil the ocean, you know, odds are that you're gonna, you know, something's gonna fall apart at some point. You know, this partnership ecosystem that we developed is a very deliberate strategic choice. It's not a sign that we lack capability, it's a sign that we understand, you know, how large projects are delivered on a repeatable basis. You know, again, having these credible counterparties with their own balance sheets know how to execute is the way that we see that we can move into hypergrowth effectively. You know, the partnership ecosystem we've developed right now is very strong. We're gonna continue to make it stronger over time.
Just to kind of go through, you know, a few critical pieces of this. You know, for one, you know, we've designed all of our, all of like basically TCDC site and the internal equipment with a legacy engineering company called EYP, which is now a division of Ramboll. They're our engineering partner. You know, why did we choose them? Well, frankly, the hyperscalers pointed us in their direction. You know, they've designed more than 75 million sq ft of data centers worldwide. You know, they've been in operation for 25+ years. You know, they know how to design facilities that work, plain and simple.
We've taken that exact same design expertise and worked with them to design the ATOM platform that I just laid out before. Let's talk about RK Mission Critical. RK Mission Critical is actually a division of a much larger company called RK Industries. RK Industries is that vertically integrated manufacturing company that we talked about before that we partnered with. They've got everything from RK Water to RK Steel. They've got an oil and gas division. They've got this dedicated production capacity that allows us, you know, specifically to know what we can manufacture over a period of time. Their vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities reduce delivery risk, especially as it relates to, you know, certain critical supply chains.
You know, they've just got a great track record of execution on complex data center projects. You know, when we look at any project, all we're looking for is, you know, what passes muster for institutional investors, and what do hyperscalers wanna see? How can we reduce risk? We view RK as a very critical component to that whole ecosystem. You know, we've also talked about this before, but, you know, Thunderhead. You know, Thunderhead is our power generation partner for TCDC. Thunderhead is backed by a group called Harbert Infrastructure. Harbert has been doing a lot in the power space for a very long time. They finance, construct, and operate behind-the-meter power islands. You know, they bring their own balance sheet.
We don't have to carry, you know, CapEx exposure for the power equipment. They've already secured the initial turbine equipment that's on order, that we know can be delivered through, you know, their partnership and now our partnership with Turbine-X. You know, and this is, you know, again, the start to a growing partnership ecosystem that we'll continue to advance. You know, happy to share more updates as we continue to add more to that ecosystem. You know, with that, I've been talking a lot, so let me hand it over to Ted to walk through how these projects are actually financed, because obviously it's important, and the capital structure is one of the most misunderstood aspects to our story. Ted, I'm gonna hand it over to you.
Thanks, Charlie. Thanks to Will as well. Couldn't be more excited to be a part of this team and the New Era story. You know, as a banker, I've seen hundreds of development opportunities in this HPC/AI landscape over the last few years. When I was able to dig in on this opportunity and the team, you know, prospective partners and core assets, I knew that I'd found the opportunity I was seeking and also that my experience and expertise were, I think, exactly what this opportunity needed at its current stage. Just felt right, and again, really happy to be here. I've been focused on large scale AI-focused digital infrastructure for a few years now.
I joined this team ultimately because the opportunity to apply proven infrastructure financing principles to AI data center development is one of the most compelling things happening in the capital markets today. During my last few years as a banker, my group was at the forefront of bespoke, accretive, scalable financing solutions for early-stage HPC/AI data center developers like New Era. We wanna quickly walk investors through why we feel the structure we're building here is smart, practical, and the best possible strategy for our shareholders at this stage of our company. The diagram on this slide shows our corporate structure. At the top you have NUAI, the holding company, the publicly traded entity, the centralized developer, owner, and asset manager. Below that, each project is structured as an individual special purpose vehicle, an SPV, and TCDC is SPV one.
Future campuses would. We would add additional SPVs. Why does this matter? For a few reasons. First, it isolates project-level risk while preserving our optionality at the parent level in the future. The project encounters a problem, it's ring-fenced within that SPV. It allows us to prevent issues from cascading to the corporate entity or to other projects if we want to. Second, it enables flexible project-specific capital formation with institutional partners. Different projects may have different capital partners, different needs, different structures, and ultimately, a different type of tenant. The SPV model accommodates New Era. It allows us to capitalize on the best possible partners and financing structures for each unique project that we're developing. Third, it just enhances our overall financability as our platform scales.
Institutional infrastructure investors, the kind that I've been working with for the last few years now and before that in the energy world, they know this structure very, very well. It's been used by a number of our well-known peers in the HPC space with top-tier investors, when they were at a similar stage over the last few years and even at later stages. We definitely think this structure is a great fit for us at this stage with our asset base. This next slide simplifies the financing model to its essentials. NUAI sits at the top as general partner, the sponsor and developer. Institutional investors sit at the bottom as limited partners, providing as much of the project capital as we need.
Now, given our availability of capital and all the relationships we have with top funds and investors, our goal is to invest as much as is allowed under any future partnership agreements and increase our ownership in each new project and partnership, as we scale. The flow here is straightforward. LPs provide capital into the project SPV. Project builds and operates the infrastructure, and LPs receive their investment returns. Contracted cash flows backed by long-term triple net leases from creditworthy tenants, you know, with the goal of finding the best possible IG tenants, specifically at TCDC. NUAI receives development fees upon project delivery, recurring management fees for ongoing asset management, and the right to material equity participation in the project. What this means for our shareholders is critical.
The vast majority of the capital-intensive construction is not funded from our corporate balance sheet. It's funded at the project level, against the creditworthiness of the tenant. The tenant's balance sheet is what the project lender is ultimately underwrite. If we're talking investment-grade tenants, we're getting probably 80% loan-to-cost. We are again at TCDC, especially striving for the best possible tenant we can find from a credit rating perspective. Our portion of the equity dollars needed after that project finance at the project level can be funded through numerous shareholder-friendly structures that help to minimize dilution and maximize our shareholder returns, many of which, you know, I've specialized in over the last few years as a banker, and I'm excited to bring some of those options to New Era.
Again, structure is designed to limit dilution, maximize returns at the parent company while still allowing a New Era to develop and manage large-scale infrastructures even at this early stage of the company. It's the same model that built the midstream energy sector, and all three of us know that well, and it's well understood by all the institutional infrastructure investors. Now I'll turn it back over to Will.
Yeah, Ted, I appreciate that. Again, you know, welcome aboard and greatly looking forward to having you know, facilitate kind of what Charlie and I have been able to place together. You know, what you've accomplished the last couple of years on the banking side has been monumental, and it's been honestly, you know, something that we've looked at and have studied, you know, in depth. Having your expertise on board and, you know, to apply that to making the company more valuable, you know, minimize dilution is off the charts. Welcome aboard and look forward to a fun ride that we're gonna have with the shareholders here. I appreciate it. Charlie, I want to say thanks as well.
I mean, you know, you coming on, you know, again, you've been here since day one. You've been here through, you know, the transformation. You know, you coming on and assisting with TCDC and what many people once laughed about now, you know, the top hyperscalers want, especially, you know, the one that we're in deep talks with. With that being said, you know, there's a number of milestones that we've achieved in 2026 and in 2025. Then, you know, heck, I've been with the company, we started this back in its current, you know, not in its current form, but back in May of 2020. You know, I've seen this company grow. We've had successes, we've had failures, but ultimately what we've done is we've created value, and a lot of it.
Where we stand today is very exciting. We have some great news to announce before too terribly long that I think everyone's waiting for, rightfully so, especially myself. I know Charlie has as well. I think having Ted on board to be able to assist us in financing that at the SPV level is gonna be massive. 'Cause again, I think, you know, the GP-LP structure has been quite unique in how we differentiate, you know, NUAI against other peer groups. They just don't exist. Then, of course, you layer on the fact that of our ability to effectuate speed to power through our behind-the-meter is off the charts as well.
Of course, our strength through partnerships, it just you know, it just lends credence of why we're succeeding, why we're gonna be a phenomenal success story, you know, in this, in this particular space. Again, you know, Ted, welcome aboard, and we definitely, you know, look forward to what you bring to the table, the value you're gonna create. Obviously, you know, looking at that, let's look at kind of what we, you know, what we've achieved thus far, and touch on some of these things briefly. You know, again, in January, I think what was most impactful was we had a great partner in Sharon AI, and congratulate, you know, Sharon AI and the team, James Manning, and in what they accomplished, you know, as a Neocloud.
You know, they initially became on as our initial partner to facilitate Texas Critical Data Centers. Ultimately, you know, we kind of developed our pathway, you know, James and his team developed their own pathway within Sharon AI. Again, great partnership and allowed us to facilitate, you know, our growth by essentially allowing us to purchase their 50% of the JV, you know, giving us 100% and full control of the project. I think that was absolutely amazing. You know, we look forward to kind of getting that funded, getting that closed out, and potentially working with James and Sharon AI in the future as a potential tenant.
That's something that, you know, I think, you know, We know what they're capable of, they know what we're capable of, and so that could be something of interest down the road. I think, you know, some other important things that happened was, of course, you know, Charlie was announced as President and COO. You know, he was doing a lot of work, on the board, a lot of time, you know, guiding myself, the entire board on kind of how do we really effectuate, you know, this tremendous asset that we have in Ector County, Texas, that again, you know, that exists next to two very powerful power plants.
Again, you know, my thesis is the easiest place to build power is where it already exists, and that's what we've done, that's what we're doing. The 438 acres plus the 54 acre corridor that we just announced, definitely some major milestones, and that was a very strategic acquisition that's gonna be kind of laid out here before too terribly long, so our shareholders kind of understand, you know, that energy corridor and why it's so imperative to how we look at phase I, phase II, and phase III ultimately. I think, you know, obviously then announcing the 450 MW, you know, behind-the-meter generation plan.
You know, through some of our commercial arrangements, you know, all the way through Thunderhead and Turbine-X, look forward to working with those guys because, you know, at the end of the day, that's been instrumental. Working on the air permit, that should be, you know, submitted and approved here relatively short order because this thing is going. I mean, we're ready to deliver in, you know, second part of 2027 and go COD. I think, you know, one other major milestone that we've had here obviously is bringing Ted on board. I think, you know, he's had such a tremendous career, great success in raising billions for a number of our peer groups.
I think having Ted on board and understanding what our GP-LP model looks like, how we look to effectuate, you know, maximum value through minimal dilution is gonna be, again, something that's not been done before and looking forward to proving that to the marketplace. I think, you know, that's gonna be really some of our next phase of growth and that is happening and I just appreciate everyone's patience to date and look forward to announcing some forthcoming news here shortly. I really want to just close by looking at slide 16, you know, some of the near-term operational priorities, and I'm just being very clear about, you know, where we are and what our investor base should be watching for.
You know, as a developer, you know, listen, the ultimate priority is really kind of advancing our site control, you know, development, readiness. Listen, we've assembled the land, you know, the corridor's underway. We're actually working on the phase I, getting that ready to rock and roll. You know, the site work's underway. Despite all the naysayers, listen, we're executing. I love it. I wish everyone could go out there and put boots on the ground because obviously pictures don't do it justice. Getting out there, seeing what we've done, seeing what we are doing, seeing what we will do is great.
I think, you know, flipping through the slide deck, you see I think what's really kind of really excited me as, you know, one of the co-founders and current Chairman and CEO of this company is what this data center is going to look like. This gigawatt site campus is what it's gonna look like. You know, it's amazing. You know, we're just focusing on the engineering and the execution, you know, really advancing the commercial discussions with our hyperscaler customer. I can say that, you know, again, we've talked about this and, you know, just to reiterate, we are in commercial negotiations with a leading hyperscale tenant. You know, we feel that there's four of them, four creditworthy hyperscalers, and we're dealing with one of those four.
You know, we believe our site characteristics, you know, the power strategy, and of course, our partner ecosystem really positions us as, you know, a very compelling story why that particular household name is even in talks with us. Of course, you know, I think the specific timing of a buying agreement is not something we can, you know, 100% control. I think that's one thing we've all learned. You know, we're not gonna set, you know, artificial deadlines, you know, but we are going to do is essentially continue to advance, you know, every controllable milestone, you know, that positions this campus for, you know, our successful commercialization. Again, as a manager, you know, we're focused here on the project level financing partnerships and continuing to build out the team and of course the capabilities.
That's really exactly what Ted's arrival represents. It represents, you know, execution and that we're here, we're at the dance. You know, we're kind of with March Madness in play right now, we're here. Not many people think we would get a seed, but we did. I think we're gonna advance nicely as well. You know, I just wanna kind of close with the thought about what NUAI is and why it exists. Again, you know, it kind of goes back to the build-out of the AI infrastructure. It's gonna be one of the more defining infrastructure cycles of the coming decades. I think we all understand that the demand is real.
You know, the power constraint is real, unfortunately, but the need for developers who can actually create power, you know, deliverability, hyperscale ready capacity, you know, it's just not theoretical megawatts. We call them kind of bragawatts. You know, it's acute, it's here. We're sitting on something that's real, that's tangible, and that will be subscribed to by our end tenant. You know, again, we sit at the intersection of two industries that rarely overlap. Obviously, you know, the energy infrastructure, again, of course, that's kind of our, you know, near and dear to our hearts and, of course, you know, what the digital infrastructure's brought. No one operates in both worlds.
You know, that intersection, the ability to take a raw site in an energy corridor, which we've done, and convert it into a power campus that meets the most demanding, you know, technical specifications on Earth, you know, is our moat. It's hard to do, and that's why we're valuable. We've done it. We're doing it. If people can see that, you know, what I saw when I first stepped foot on that property well over a year ago, it was a vision I had that I knew would come to fruition. We've done it. You know, we've assembled the land, we've assembled the power, the team, the partnerships, and now what we do is we just execute. I just wanna be, you know, from the bottom of my heart, say thank you.
You know, we've had so many people out there to tell us what we're doing wrong, what we're not doing, what we can't do. I'm here to tell you we're doing it. It will get done. Just again, I thank you for your patience, for your loyalty, and we're gonna open this up for questions. Thank you again.
Great. We've obviously just conscious of time. We've seen quite a few questions come through the live webcast. Many of them relate to similar topics. Perhaps, Will, we just address a couple of those grouped by themes. I think some of the questions are around, you know, the cash position, liquidity, and how we're anticipating to fund working capital and growth, Will.
Yeah. I think that's a good question. You know, obviously, you know, we ended, you know, the end of the year with about $1.2 million of cash on hand. You know, and since that time, we've essentially gone out and kind of worked on some of those capital needs. You know, short term, you know, ideally our G&A is relatively modest to the overall spend of what we're looking to do at TCDC, of course, taking into the GP-LP model. I think that's one thing bringing Ted on is, you know, better understanding, you know, the financial structures that are available to, you know, to the company, whether that be some sort of, you know, senior convertible, whether it's taking sort of a mezz piece, some sort of a credit facility, you know.
You know, ideally, you know, we have a lot of options to do that. You know, of course, we have some upcoming obligations that's due to Sharon AI at the end of the month. We've got, you know, some different opportunities that are gonna be quite, I guess, quite meaningful to how we, you know, position the company moving forward financially. Definitely it's a great question. Yeah. I hope I answered that one, Lincoln.
Thanks, Will. The other theme, and we've seen many of these questions come through, I know you sort of touched on it, just any more color, Will, on the hyperscaler tenant announcement. Are we anticipating more hyperscaler tenants in the future? Who is the counterparty? Questions of that nature.
Yeah. I think I can sit here and sympathize with all the shareholders because I get it. We all want to know. You all want to know. You know, we created that. You know, like I said previously, you know, there's four hyperscale investment grade companies that are out there. We are speaking with one of those, you know. So I don't anticipate us bringing any others into the mix at this stage. We are pretty far along. I think that's one thing I do wanna share with investors is that, you know, we can control what we can control.
You know, when you start looking at those four hyperscalers, some of the largest companies in the world, and unfortunately, they do not move as fast as we would like them to. But is it progressing? Absolutely. Will it happen? It will happen. I do feel there's going to be some news that we can announce forthcoming that would give some clarity. I think at this stage in the game, you know, when we made the announcement of the acquisition or the lease option acquisition of the 54 acres, you know, that was at the behest of the end tenant.
You know, when you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together, it's gonna make perfect sense on why that energy corridor will come into play with, you know, Texas Critical Data Centers. I do again, I do sympathize, and I do understand and recognize, you know, the need to disclose this as soon as possible, because there's one thing that we are adhering to, and that is, you know, basically delivering data center, you know, on or before in Q3 of 2027. That is not being moved. That is a hard date that we have that we will meet. With Charlie, you know, better rolling out his modularization of kind of the ATOM project, I think that's definitely helped us because again, you know, it's one thing just to announce.
You know, anyone can go out there and announce, you know, triple net lease on the, you know, and announce a, you know, the, a hyperscaler. Again, I think what we all have to look at is also the delivery of the data center itself. How do you execute? Because if not, there is no cash flow. I think, you know, we're trying to handle all of these various nuances and craft it into one document, which again, is very time-consuming because again, the, you know, this gigawatt style era of data center campuses is new. You know, we're creating documents that no one's seen before. It's, it has taken some additional time than we originally anticipated, but things are moving. That's the promising aspect of this.
When we're asked the question of, you know, are we talking to, you know, to other hyperscalers, you know, absolutely, because, you know, those are for our additional projects. We're pretty far well along, very far down the path with Texas Critical Data Centers and, you know, who do we anticipate, you know, getting in there and getting breaking dirt there. I do think, you know, let's I just appreciate everyone's patience. And again, it will be forthcoming. And again, just stay tuned, please. Lincoln, how are we doing on time here?
Yeah, I think just conscious of time, Will. I think we're over the hour, so it probably makes sense to wrap up.
Okay. I think, you know, I just wanna thank everyone for logging in today and listening. I know that was a very lengthy presentation that was delivered by both myself, Charlie, and Ted. A lot of, you know, commercial data was shared today, both on kind of where we've been, where we are, where we're going. I think at the end of the day, you know, it starts with, you know, the execution and the deliverability of phase I, which is on TCDC, which is coming, power, you know, speed to power in Q3 of 2027. With that being said, we will be communicating additional items to the market to keep everyone up to speed.
Again, just like I said earlier, I cannot thank everyone enough for their patience, you know, for their loyalty and for their belief in what we're building, what we've built thus far. Again, just thank everyone and look forward to providing additional updates here very soon.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.