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Today’s Essential Episodes:
SemiAnalysis on the Midterms and the 2028 Build-Out: Why 2027 Is Locked In, Texas’s 30% Share and the Power-Plant Permit Risk
SemiAnalysis Weekly, with Jordan Nanos, and SemiAnalysis analysts Maya Barkin, Wayne Ma and Jeremie Eliahou OntiverosGina Hinojosa on a Moratorium on New Texas Data Centers, AI Guardrails and Rural Water
The Conversation with Dasha Burns (POLITICO), with Dasha Burns, and Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat running for governor of Texas, in a September 25 episode recorded before the electionArm CEO Rene Haas on a $2 Billion Target for the Arm AGI CPU, Data Center Passing Smartphones and the Data-Center Backlash
Squawk on the Street (CNBC), with Jim Cramer and David Faber, and Arm CEO Rene HaasUBS’s Tim Arcuri on the Power Gap Under Chip Forecasts, Micron in a Downturn and NVIDIA’s Untapped Installed Base
The Compute 100, with Brian Schechter and Gaby Lorenzi of Primary, and Timothy Arcuri, Managing Director at UBSRobinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on 150,000 Agentic Trading Accounts, Tokenized Private Shares and Trump Accounts
No Priors, with Sarah Guo, and Vlad Tenev, co-founder and CEO of RobinhoodGoogle DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis on Closed-Loop Self-Improvement, Six to Eight Frontier Labs and a Safety Standards Body
Masters of Scale, with Reid Hoffman, and Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind
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THE SIGNAL
Texas is close to 30% of modeled 2028 US additions; in SemiAnalysis’s pro-pause scenario, 30.3 GW of planned 2028 capacity is exposed, not necessarily delayed, versus 5.7 GW in the conditions-only and poll-implied cases.
Since recording, the AP called Texas for Hinojosa (per the publisher); Barkin’s Hinojosa scenario keeps the pause until the 2027 legislature acts, five to nine months past a December restart, tight for 2027-delivery campuses.
Some funded Texas shells began building without final air permits; the freeze now covers on-site power, and under a longer pause, Ontiveros says, those permits could slip toward mid-2027, leaving shells without power plants.
A federal rule making large users pay grid costs is the likeliest bipartisan outcome, meaning developers pay upfront or post more collateral, which delays projects but doesn’t block them; some developers are already declining tax breaks.
01 2027 locked in, 2028 the swing year
Recorded on Election Day morning, before any results (per the publisher), the episode opens with analyst Maya Barkin restating the article’s central argument: roughly three-quarters of the 2027 capacity due in the top 20 states is already under construction, so the midterm results won’t stop it, which is why SemiAnalysis stays comfortable with its 50+ GW global 2027 estimate. The 2028 pipeline (62GW in the US model) is different — most of it still needs permits, power agreements, and construction schedules finalized in states electing governors today. In September, the team had estimated only about 1.5GW of roughly 20GW sitting inside local restrictions was actually delayed; that broad conclusion — that moratoriums are not stopping buildouts — still holds, but two things changed since then: Texas’s permit freeze escalated, and candidate positions hardened, with most 2028-critical governors now favoring either pauses or stricter conditions.
02 Texas as the pivotal market
Texas’s TCEQ stopped issuing datacenter permits at the end of September, layered on an ERCOT interconnection queue audit since August — together pulling even on-site power generation into limbo. Barkin modeled two scenarios before the vote: if Governor Abbott won reelection (she saw him as favored, though the race had tightened), his directives would simply expire and permitting could reopen with stricter terms once ERCOT’s audit report lands, targeted for early December — a delay most 2027-targeting projects can absorb. If Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa won, she would keep the moratorium until the legislature (in session January–May 2027) passes new protections covering household power and water bills, an end to subsidies, an NDA ban and union labor: about eight months if approvals come in that session, close to a year if the new rules only start in late summer, or five to nine months past a December restart, which is tight for 2027-delivery campuses. Since recording, per the publisher, the AP called Texas for Hinojosa and Georgia for Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Democrats won a 3-2 majority on the Georgia commission that sets power rates. Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros flags the main downside risk to SemiAnalysis’s 2027 forecast, which he says sits on the high side of market estimates: some funded shells already under construction don’t yet have their final air-pollution permits, and under an extended Texas pause those approvals could slip from December toward mid-2027 — the data centers can keep building, but their power plants can’t.
03 Why the backlash is bipartisan
Wayne Ma says his research found the party divide doesn’t track pause-vs-conditions preference as expected; instead, ordinary residents near proposed sites oppose datacenters regardless of party, driven by AI job-loss anxiety and water/electricity misinformation. Ontiveros frames this as a structural shift: datacenter investment-per-footprint is unusually high (a 1GW site can cost $50 billion), and as annual US buildout scaled roughly 10-20x in five years (from a few GW to 40GW in 2027), the old tax-incentive playbook designed for smaller scale no longer fits — he expects market forces to push developers toward paying communities more directly rather than relying on incentives. Wayne Ma points to Ohio, where incentives expected to cost about $136 million/year reached $1.6 billion last year, as a reason candidates of both parties are running to roll incentives back. Ontiveros also flags grid risk from the load side, which he frames as the reverse of Spain’s blackout on the generation side: in Virginia, he says, roughly 1.5GW of datacenter load dropped off at once when UPS systems tripped during a voltage dip, which he says nearly caused a blackout, since a loss that large, that fast can trigger one.
04 Mechanics of permits, conditions, and federal limits
Barkin distinguishes a “pause” (moratorium halting permit issuance — building, air, or zoning) from “conditions” (grid-cost funding, cooling redesign, community agreements) that let projects proceed slower and costlier rather than stall entirely. Governors can move fast via agency directives (Abbott in Texas, an Oregon environmental-permit hold), while legislatures move slower and haven’t adopted any moratoriums yet. Across the tracked policy table — grid cost responsibility, tax exemptions, water limits, bring-your-own-power mandates, community benefits, NDA bans, local control — Democrats lean toward union-labor requirements and NDA bans while Republicans lean toward local control, but ending tax incentives and requiring grid-cost payment are popular across the spectrum. At the federal level, even a Democratic House/Senate sweep is seen as unlikely to change outcomes much, since Trump retains veto power through his term and a narrow Senate would still need Republican votes; the one cross-party consensus is making large electricity users pay their own grid costs, which Trump also supports.
05 Community relations and PR
The panel discusses how developers might win over neighbors: Wayne Ma points to Amazon and Google ending NDAs as reducing the perception of secret dealmaking, alongside highlighting hyperscalers’ renewable-energy purchasing and local infrastructure contributions (fire stations, playgrounds) in underdeveloped areas like West Texas. Ma says direct cash payments to residents are seen as ineffective per on-the-ground interviews, while Barkin argues that transparency, community education on water/environmental impact, and funding schools or roads are better received. One local representative told Barkin that if developers were “hanging up Christmas lights, then we wouldn’t be opposed to them.” The jobs debate surfaces tension: while construction jobs benefit some local workers, an Iowa county-board candidate noted many datacenter construction jobs are filled by out-of-state or international labor, limiting local job-market benefit. The team closes by flagging Texas and Georgia (a toss-up, per Wayne Ma, between Keisha Lance Bottoms, who wants a temporary pause, and an opponent who favors conditions) as the races they’re watching most closely, alongside SemiAnalysis’s ongoing work on the anti-datacenter backlash, which Barkin calls a 2026 phenomenon.
THE SIGNAL
Hinojosa pledged a moratorium on new Texas data centers until the legislature passes protections on water, electricity and jobs; (our read) that’s the pause SemiAnalysis’s Hinojosa scenario assumes, and Burns notes some Republicans oppose data centers too.
Hinojosa says Panhandle residents near Project Matador were told by a water-authority spokesperson that its data-center contract means homes would lose water first in a shortage; (our read) such contracts could draw political or legal challenges.
Hinojosa said she waited to meet affected communities before setting her data-center position and promised an AI plan soon; (our read) as of the September interview, the rules and their cost to operators were still undefined.
01 The moratorium pitch
Recorded at her Austin campaign headquarters before the election, the exchange starts with Burns asking what Hinojosa would do beyond the guardrails Abbott says he has already imposed on data centers, which make them cover their own costs, protect the grid and save water. Hinojosa says the answer is laws, not promises that can be broken after the election. She has called on Abbott to convene an emergency special session, which she says only he can call and he refuses to; as governor, she says, she would impose a moratorium on new data centers until lawmakers pass protections covering water, electricity, jobs and AI guardrails.