Summary
- Hudson signed a five-year, inflation-linked contract for 1.8MW with an unnamed specialist provider of high-density GPU cloud infrastructure.
- Billing is expected to start in September 2026 on an initial 450kW; the remaining 1.35MW is scheduled for delivery by the end of 2026.
- Together with a separate expansion order from an existing customer, the agreement takes sixth-floor contracted IT load to about 2.8MW, up from roughly 0.9MW.
- The floor has 5MW of utility power but 3.5MW of saleable IT load, so the announced contracted share is approximately 80% of the saleable figure.
- The GPU-cloud customer has a right of first refusal over a further 2MW; that option is not contracted capacity, and Cordiant disclosed no customer name, price, revenue, margin or breakeven date.
A megawatt can change meaning six times before it appears in a data-centre operator’s cash flow. It can describe power delivered by a utility, IT load the building can sell, capacity reserved in a contract, equipment that has been installed, service that has begun billing, or occupancy sufficient to cover the asset’s costs.
Hudson’s announcement is useful because it supplies several rungs of that ladder. It is also easy to misread because the rungs sit close together. The disciplined interpretation is that customer commitment has advanced sharply while revenue recognition and full deployment remain future milestones.
The denominator behind 80% is 3.5MW, not 5MW
Cordiant says the sixth floor has 5MW of utility power and 3.5MW of saleable IT load. Those figures are not contradictory. Electricity entering a data-centre floor also supports cooling, conversion losses, pumps, lighting and other building systems. The amount available to customer IT equipment is therefore smaller than the utility feed.
About 2.8MW of contracted IT load divided by 3.5MW of saleable IT load produces the stated occupancy of roughly 80%. Dividing by 5MW would answer a different question and understate commercial take-up. Describing all 5MW as customer capacity would make the opposite error.
The pre-announcement baseline was around 0.9MW contracted. The two agreements therefore add approximately 1.9MW in aggregate, although the announcement specifies 1.8MW only for the new GPU-cloud customer and does not separately quantify the existing customer’s expansion order. That boundary should remain intact; subtracting rounded totals can indicate scale but cannot manufacture a precise second contract size.
A signed megawatt still has a delivery schedule
The new five-year contract is inflation-linked, which gives Hudson a mechanism for adjusting charges over time. The release does not disclose the base price, the index, any collar or cap, commencement conditions, service credits, renewal rights or termination terms. “Inflation-linked” describes a pricing rule, not the value of the revenue stream.
Billing is expected to begin in September on 450kW. The other 1.35MW is scheduled to be delivered by year-end. This sequence matters: the full 1.8MW is contracted, but only the first quarter of it is expected to enter billing at the opening milestone.
Delivery is not the same as a press-release date. Two new data halls are nearing completion, and Hudson plans to begin the final two halls on the floor. Electrical distribution, cooling, racks, network cross-connects, commissioning and customer equipment must align before each phase can operate. A slippage in any one can move the cash-flow date even when the customer agreement remains valid.
The extra 2MW is an option on future scarcity
The unnamed customer has a right of first refusal over a further 2MW. That right may have strategic value in a building known for dense carrier and exchange access, but it is not a booking for another 2MW.
A right of first refusal normally gives its holder the opportunity to match or accept terms before capacity is offered elsewhere. Exercise may still depend on price, availability, technical readiness and a later decision. The announcement does not say the option has been exercised, paid for or assigned to a floor.
It would therefore be wrong to report 3.8MW under contract for this customer or 4.8MW contracted on the sixth floor. The first valid number is 1.8MW for the new contract. The second is about 2.8MW for total sixth-floor contracted IT load after both agreements. The 2MW right belongs in a separate contingent-capacity ledger.
Interconnection gives the power a commercial surface
Hudson Interxchange operates at 60 Hudson Street, a long-established connectivity address in Manhattan. Cordiant says the building hosts more than 300 carriers and exchanges. Hudson markets retail and wholesale colocation, high-density deployments and primary power across the facility.
That context explains why a specialist GPU-cloud provider might value the site beyond raw electrical capacity. High-density compute needs large power and cooling envelopes, but a cloud service also needs routes to customers, upstream networks, peers and other infrastructure. Dense interconnection can reduce the number of external links a tenant must assemble and can make capacity at one address more useful than the same nominal megawatts at an isolated site.
The source does not identify the customer or disclose its intended hardware, markets, tenants or traffic. Interconnection density is therefore an operating explanation, not proof of a particular workload or commercial strategy.
“Closer to breakeven” is direction, not a completed result
Cordiant says the agreements move Hudson closer to breakeven once the capacity is fully deployed. That formulation contains two qualifications. The outcome is closer, not achieved; and the assessment depends on full deployment, which is scheduled rather than complete.
Breakeven also depends on more than contracted megawatts. Revenue per kilowatt, electricity pass-through, network and cross-connect income, fit-out expenditure, maintenance, staffing, financing and the timing of cash collection all shape the threshold. None of those amounts is supplied here.
The announcement is still economically significant. Increasing contracted share from around one quarter of saleable load to about four fifths reduces leasing risk on the floor and supports the decision to complete the remaining halls. It does not permit a reader to calculate annual recurring revenue, gross margin, payback or the month Hudson becomes cash-positive.
The next evidence is operational, not another headline capacity figure
The September invoice on 450kW is the first visible checkpoint. Next comes delivery of the remaining 1.35MW by year-end, followed by evidence that the separate expansion order and other contracted capacity are installed and consuming service. Disclosure of completed halls, live IT load and recognised revenue would close the gaps between commitment and operation.
Investors should also watch whether the right of first refusal becomes a signed contract, whether Hudson sells the uncommitted portion of the 3.5MW floor, and whether Cordiant replaces its directional breakeven language with a measured operating result.
For now, the commercial story is stronger than a building pipeline but narrower than an earnings claim. Hudson has converted much of one floor’s saleable capacity into signed demand. It must still convert those signatures into installed equipment, invoices and sufficient contribution to carry the asset.