Cash is the new compute
Capital is no longer chasing software. It is chasing the physical structures that house it. On December 17, 2025, reports surfaced that OpenAI is finalizing a funding round that could push its valuation toward the $150 billion threshold. This is not merely a venture capital milestone. It is a direct signal to the credit markets that the demand for high density compute is accelerating beyond the current supply of Tier 3 and Tier 4 facilities. When Jim Cramer noted on his December 16 broadcast that investors should look past the chipmakers and toward the cooling and enclosure providers, he was identifying a shift from speculative AI growth to the hard infrastructure phase of the cycle. The liquidity entering the OpenAI ecosystem will almost immediately be recycled into the balance sheets of hyperscale landlords.
The infrastructure bottleneck
The current market environment differs significantly from the 2023 hype cycle. In late 2025, the constraint is no longer GPU availability. It is power and space. Per the latest Reuters sector analysis, data center vacancy rates in Northern Virginia and the Silicon Valley corridor have dropped below 1 percent. This scarcity has transformed Data Center REITs like Equinix and Digital Realty from sleepy dividend plays into high growth infrastructure assets. The OpenAI funding news acts as a confirmation of long term tenancy. If the leader in Large Language Models is securing an additional $10 billion in capital, the market assumes that a significant portion of that cash is earmarked for long term lease commitments with hyperscalers. This creates a predictable revenue tailwind for the companies that own the concrete and the fiber.
The Cramer contrarian indicator and the reality of the grid
Jim Cramer suggested on Tuesday that the market is underestimating the secondary players in the AI stack. He specifically mentioned Vertiv and Eaton. For once, the institutional desks seem to agree with the retail sentiment. The bottleneck is the power grid. According to data released in the December 18 Bloomberg report, the total power draw from global data centers is expected to double by the end of next year. This has led to a strategic pivot toward nuclear co-location. Companies are no longer satisfied with buying green credits. They are buying the physical proximity to reactors. The OpenAI funding validates this massive capital expenditure. If OpenAI is to reach its internal goals for its next generation model, it requires a level of energy reliability that traditional municipal grids cannot provide. This makes the data center operators the gatekeepers of the next era of computation.
Valuation disconnects and the credit spread
While the equity market has been focused on the headline valuation of OpenAI, the bond market is looking at the cost of debt for the REITs that house these chips. With the Federal Reserve signaling a pause in rate cuts during the December 17 meeting, the cost of capital remains high. This creates a bifurcation in the sector. Only the largest operators with the strongest balance sheets can afford to continue the build out. We are seeing a consolidation where smaller providers are being swallowed by private equity firms like Blackstone and KKR. The narrative pushed by Cramer focuses on the stock price, but the real story is in the debt. Data center stocks are currently trading at a premium because they are perceived as the only sector with guaranteed demand regardless of the broader macro economic slowdown. This is no longer a technology trade. It is a utility trade with a high growth kicker.
The technical mechanism of the infrastructure squeeze
To understand why data center stocks are rising, one must understand the technical shift in rack density. In early 2024, a standard server rack consumed between 10 and 15 kilowatts. By late 2025, racks utilizing the latest liquid cooled architectures are pulling over 100 kilowatts per cabinet. This ten fold increase in power density means that 90 percent of existing data center inventory is technically obsolete for the most advanced AI workloads. The funding for OpenAI is essentially a down payment on a new generation of facilities that do not exist yet. This creates a massive moat for companies that have the capital and the local zoning permits to build these specialized facilities. Investors are betting that the rent per square foot for these high density pods will increase by 40 percent over the next twelve months.
Watching the 2026 delivery window
The immediate focus for the first quarter of the coming year will be the delivery schedule of the next generation of power distribution units. While the OpenAI funding provides the capital, it does not provide the copper or the transformers. Market participants should monitor the 10-K filings of major electrical equipment manufacturers for signs of lead time expansion. If the lead time for large scale transformers moves from 50 weeks to 70 weeks, the valuation of existing data centers will skyrocket as they become the only viable options for deployment. The next major milestone for the sector is the late January 2026 earnings cycle, where Microsoft and Google will provide updated guidance on their physical infrastructure investments for the remainder of the decade. The data point to watch is the ratio of CapEx to revenue growth, specifically within the cloud services division.
