The newest items put dates and thresholds on two constraints that had been open-ended. SpaceXAI said on July 30 that it had entered into an agreed order with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality setting a removal timetable for all 69 temporary gas turbines at its Southaven facility, which supply power near the Tennessee-Mississippi state line for the infrastructure serving xAI's Colossus data centers; the company says removals can begin as early as August 2026 and must be complete by July 2027, and that a 1.2 GW natural-gas plant using 41 permanent turbines, built under a Clean Air Act permit, will replace them. MDEQ's public database lists that air-construction permit as issued to MZX Tech on March 11, 2026. The two turbine counts are not a one-for-one capacity comparison, and the retrieved sources do not show that the agreed order resolves the federal Clean Air Act dispute in which the NAACP and environmental-law groups allege the temporary units ran without required permits; the company has argued the trailer-mounted units qualify as temporary mobile equipment. In New York, Executive Order 62, signed July 14, directs the Department of Environmental Conservation to hold pending or future applications for discretionary state permits, approvals or licenses tied to constructing or expanding data centers capable of consuming at least 50 megawatts, but only where DEC had not deemed the application complete before July 14. The governor's office says the pause can last up to one year; permits issued by local governments are expressly excluded, as are facilities used primarily for manufacturing, research, education or medical care, with academic, quantum and biomedical research and the Empire AI consortium named among the exemptions. The Department of Public Service must prepare a Generic Environmental Impact Statement through a public process covering energy demand, water use and quality, air quality, noise and disproportionate effects on disadvantaged communities, and the hold remains in place until DPS submits the final review.
The capital moving toward those permits kept scaling, and it increasingly arrives through third parties. Amazon reported AWS second-quarter sales of $42.2 billion, up 37% and its fastest growth in 18 quarters, and Andy Jassy told investors the company now expects roughly $220 billion of 2026 cash capital expenditures, up from the $200 billion plan announced in February, while still saying Amazon will not have enough capacity to meet all of its 2026 demand and expecting the same dynamic in 2027. Meta disclosed $278.99 billion of operating and finance lease obligations that had not yet commenced as of June 30 for data centers, colocations and network infrastructure, about 53% above the $182.88 billion reported at March 31, plus roughly $68 billion of additional data-center leases entered in July carrying 18-to-20-year terms; it also agreed to place its under-construction 1 GW El Paso campus, with approximately $14 billion of development costs, into a venture in which BlackRock-managed funds would hold 80% while Meta keeps 20%, leases the entire campus under a four-year initial term with four extension options, and discloses residual-value guarantees with an aggregate threshold of roughly $13 billion that declines over time. Microsoft's move of more future datacenter leases into operating-lease treatment lowers expected reported calendar-2026 capex to about $175 billion from the roughly $190 billion given in April without changing the underlying plan, so reported capex is a weaker proxy for committed capacity than it looks. Generation is being pulled inside the project boundary: the Department of Energy's July 29 Paducah partnership pairs a proposed 1.8 GW AI and high-performance computing campus with NextEra's intent to develop 2 GW of new grid-connected gas generation and up to 2.6 GW of battery storage, with the power service agreement still requiring Kentucky Public Service Commission approval, while Aalo Atomics and Crusoe plan a 2027 Idaho National Laboratory proof of concept. Public procurement widened as EuroHPC opened its AI Gigafactories tender on July 30 with applications due November 12, 2026. The friction stays local: Mississauga council directed staff on July 29 to prepare an interim control bylaw, Saskatoon directed administration to report on data-centre costs and policy options, Boulder City Council voted unanimously on July 14 to appeal the Bureau of Land Management's 88.5-acre Townsite authorization, and the Greater Birmingham Humane Society sued over a reported 300-megawatt Nebius project that Nebius says was lawfully permitted.
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