The forty-campus ledger

This is the campus ledger, the forty largest announced datacenter campuses on the record at the end of August 2026. They were chosen by their announced size where a figure exists and by their standing in the record where none does, which is why a program sized in the press at twenty megawatts and fourteen campuses with no defensible figure stand among them. It is this book’s own reconstruction, graded D in the Scorecard, and every figure in it carries a source and a date on its companion page. Each row sets the IT load announced for the campus, the computing load as distinct from the power the site draws, against the IT load the public record evidenced at the end of August 2026. Each row also gives the state of the builder’s dated promise. A megawatt counts as evidenced when a primary document shows it energized or when Epoch AI’s site-level estimate counts it as operating IT capacity, and never when the builder says so. Epoch’s estimate is of capacity installed rather than of power metered, so the evidenced column can run ahead of the load actually drawn, never behind it. Where a builder has published a figure the row takes the builder’s. Where none has, the row takes Epoch’s estimate of the campus as built or planned, marked E, which for a campus not yet built is Epoch’s figure for its planned end state. Where neither a primary document nor Epoch supports a figure, the cell says no defensible figure.

Announced against energized, the ledger shows a gap of eight to one. Twenty-six of the forty carry a figure: thirteen the builder’s or a press report’s, 24.8 gigawatts together, and thirteen Epoch’s estimate, 13.6 gigawatts together, Doña Ana’s 1,750 megawatts among them as Epoch’s figure for the end of 2028. Together the twenty-six come to 38.4 gigawatts announced or estimated, against 4.8 gigawatts evidenced across all forty. Two campuses in Inner Mongolia are partly operating, one of them with a first-phase figure on the company’s word only, so the 4.8 is a floor. The gap is widest where the figure is the builder’s own. The thirteen campuses with a builder’s or a press figure have 133 megawatts evidenced between them, all of it at Helios in Dickens County, Texas, and twelve of the thirteen have none. The thirteen Epoch sizes have 4.64 gigawatts, about three gigawatts estimated for each one evidenced. On the twenty-six campuses with both figures the evidenced load is 4.77 gigawatts, the fifty megawatts at Nebius’s Vineland campus, which has no defensible announced figure, standing outside them. Of the 4.8 gigawatts evidenced, 2.0 sit on three campuses that never dated a phase, Amazon’s Rainier at New Carlisle, Microsoft’s Fairwater Atlanta and Google’s New Albany, so two-fifths of the energized load lies outside the promise test altogether.

Each row’s promise is the builder’s own dated phase, a date the builder gave in its own words for a stated phase, as the record held it at the end of August 2026. The rows do not move after that reading, and a date reported later is noted on the companion page, not here. Never dated means no such phase. Not yet due means a dated phase whose day had not come. Kept means a dated phase evidenced by its day. Slipped means a dated phase whose day passed with the phase evidenced late or only in part. Missed means a day passed with nothing evidenced. Due, not evidenced, means a day passed with no record either way. Transferred means a promise whose capacity passed to another party. Counted so, sixteen never dated a phase, fifteen had a dated phase not yet due, four slipped, two kept their dates, one came due without evidence and one was transferred. One, Microsoft’s Fairwater Wisconsin, is missed if its “early 2026” means the first quarter, since the campus went live in mid-April; it is counted here as a miss, as chapter 12 counts it. Scala’s first stage, due on 11 September 2026, was not yet due at the reading and has been missed since.

Three things do not date a row. A target reported on unnamed people’s word does not. Bloomberg’s of 30 July 2026 for DeepSeek’s Ulanqab campus, that the company was pushing to bring at least part of the capacity online by the end of 2027 or early 2028, is one. A utility’s filed load schedule does not, since it is the customer’s contract with its utility, as Michigan’s utility regulator approved for Oracle’s Green Chile Ventures at Saline Township on 18 December 2025. A date reported after the reading does not. The ABC’s of 16 September 2026, naming no source, that Anthropic, tenant of part of Western Downs, aims to start using the center in 2027, is one.

Chapter 12 scores the promises on a second list, the slippage matrix, thirty-one dated deadlines that overlap these forty, and where both lists hold a campus the matrix’s reading governs. Two rows differ from it here. Colossus 2 is slipped on this ledger, which reads the campus, and missed on both its steps on the matrix, which reads the phases; Scala’s miss the matrix dates to 11 September. On the ledger’s own list nine dated promises have come due: two kept, four slipped, one missed on the reading of “early,” one due without evidence, and Scala’s since the reading. Chapter 12’s test asks for three in four kept by 31 December 2027, on the matrix, and nine promises, five of them one builder’s, are too few to convict a cohort of forty. The full ledger, every column with its source and its date, and a page for each campus, is at dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger. What the ledger shows is the gap: forty campuses announced or estimated at thirty-eight gigawatts and evidenced at under five.

From the book’s backmatter.