StackedAI’s NNN DC Lease Universe identifies 442 US NNN and net data center leases from REIT disclosures, deal press, SEC ABS filings and rating-agency presales (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). Removing colocation, neocloud and hyperscaler tenants leaves roughly 100 with enterprise, carrier or government credit, and only 35 pure-enterprise leases under the full filter. The scarcity is structural: enterprises own data centers as equipment, not real estate.
Key terms
- NNN (triple net) lease: the tenant pays base rent plus property taxes, insurance and maintenance, leaving the landlord a passive income stream.
- Enterprise credit: a non-data-center operating company (bank, carrier, manufacturer, software company or government agency) whose balance sheet stands behind the rent.
- Powered shell: a building with utility power, structure and connectivity in place, where the tenant installs and owns the mechanical and electrical fit-out.
- Sale-leaseback (SLB): an owner-occupier sells its data center to an investor and simultaneously signs a long-term lease to stay in place.
- WALE: weighted average lease expiry, the income-weighted years remaining on a portfolio’s leases.
- Development yield: stabilized net operating income divided by total development cost, the return on a build-to-suit lease.
- Verification tier: the workbook’s evidence grade per lease: V (property-level verified from a public source), P (portfolio-level verified, asset detail pending) or L (listing or advisory source).
How was the NNN DC Lease Universe built?
The universe is a July 2026 compilation of every US data center lease StackedAI could identify as NNN or net in structure, built in four tranches so source quality is visible row by row (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
| Tranche | What it captures | Primary sources | Leases |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | REIT-held and broker-listed NNN data centers, including carrier hotels and single-tenant shells | REIT disclosures, deal press, broker listings | 118 |
| T2 | Net leases with enterprise and hyperscale tenants only (no colocation operators as tenants) | Deal press, REIT filings, AI build-to-suit announcements | 108 |
| T3 | Hyperscale and enterprise wholesale leases, pre-AI and AI era (no colocation or neocloud tenants) | Annual real estate reviews via trade press, SEC filings | 70 |
| T4 | Non-media primary sources | SEC ABS-15G exhibits, rating-agency presales, GSA data, court dockets | 146 |
| Total | Combined identified universe | 442 |
Source: StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026.
Each row carries a verification tier (V, P or L), and every figure is checked against primary filings before use in underwriting or external representation, which is why this page publishes aggregates rather than lease-level detail.
The fifth cut matters most for buyers of credit. Applying the full filter (no colocation operator, no neocloud, no hyperscaler as tenant) isolates roughly 100 leases in the version 5 workbook with enterprise, carrier or government credit; tightening to pure-enterprise tenants in version 6 leaves 35 (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
Why is enterprise NNN data center paper so scarce?
Four mechanisms explain the gap between 442 leases and 35.
Enterprises hold data centers as PP&E, not real estate. A Fortune 1000 company that built a data center carries it as property and equipment; no lease exists because the occupier is the owner. StackedAI’s brownfield thesis treats this inventory as the largest under-priced AI-convertible stock in North America precisely because it is invisible to listing services (StackedAI analysis, Tier-2 brownfield conversion thesis, 2026). A lease is created only when the owner elects a sale-leaseback, the decision covered in sale-leaseback vs outright sale.
Carrier leasebacks dominate the credit slice. Of the roughly 100 credit-filtered leases, the CenturyLink and Lumen lineage through Cyxtera contributes roughly 40, Verizon’s former Terremark sites 22 and AT&T’s former Evoque sites 18 (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). These are legacy carrier facilities spun into colocation platforms with the carrier as anchor tenant: real credit, but not the diversified corporate tenant base net-lease investors expect.
Diversified net-lease REITs do not play. Gladstone Commercial explicitly excludes data centers from its criteria and W. P. Carey’s data center exposure is de minimis (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). The buyers who normally create liquidity for single-tenant net leases have opted out, so the class trades through specialists: Five 9s Digital, StratCap, Lincoln Rackhouse, Aphorio Carter, Tenet Equity and Menlo Equities, mapped in who owns NNN data center leases.
Hyperscalers absorb the new supply. Hyperscalers accounted for 59% of 2026 tenant demand (JLL via DCD, Aug 2026), and 95% of the 66 GW under construction in North America is pre-committed (JLL, North America Data Center Report Midyear 2026, Aug 2026). New NNN paper is being written at scale, but to hyperscaler and AI-lab credit on 100 MW to 1 GW campuses with 10 to 20 year terms (StackedAI analysis, transaction structures framework, 2026), not at the 7 to 25 MW enterprise size StackedAI’s buy box targets (StackedAI analysis, Tier-2 brownfield conversion thesis, 2026).
Who holds NNN data center leases today?
- Mapletree Industrial Trust: roughly 56 US data centers on NNN structures, acquired at 6 to 9 year WALE with 1.5 to 3% escalators (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
- Digital Core REIT: 9 US assets, 85% NNN (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
- COPT Defense Properties: 31 single-tenant NNN shells in Northern Virginia, 5.9 million square feet, one Fortune 100 cloud tenant, 24 held in joint ventures (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
- Brookfield, through Centersquare: the former Evoque and Cyxtera platforms with AT&T and Lumen as anchor tenants across roughly 330 MW in North America (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
- Specialists: single assets and small portfolios, typically carrier switch sites at $10 to 15M tickets on 15 to 16 year NNN terms (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
The public enterprise exemplars are few enough to list: Bank of America’s roughly 1 million square foot SLB to Lincoln Rackhouse in 2018, Salesforce’s 26 MW lease with QTS in 2018, Supermicro’s 21 MW 10-year lease in Vernon, California, and Twitter’s 48 MW in Hillsboro, Oregon (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). That a decade of enterprise leasing fits in one sentence is the scarcity finding.
What do NNN data center leases price at?
As of August 2026 the major brokerages have not published a data-center-specific cap-rate series, so pricing evidence comes from disclosed transactions and adjacent net-lease surveys. A fuller discussion is in data center sale-leaseback cap rates.
| Benchmark | Figure | Original source |
|---|---|---|
| 15-year NNN with hyperscaler tenant, development yield | 7.5–8.5% | Alantra, Data Center M&A Review, 2024 |
| Digital Realty powered-shell portfolio, cap rate on sale to Mapletree | 6.6% | Mapletree Industrial Trust, 2020 |
| Sila Realty Trust 29-asset data center portfolio, NOI yield | ~5.8% | dgtlinfra, 2021 |
| All single-tenant net lease asking cap rate, Q1 2026 | 6.80% | The Boulder Group, Net Lease Market Report Q1 2026 |
| Industrial single-tenant net lease asking cap rate, Q1 2026 | 7.15% | The Boulder Group, Net Lease Market Report Q1 2026 |
| Telco-credit NNN data center cap rates | 7.0–8.5% | StackedAI analysis, roll-up workbook, 2026 |
| Annual escalators, REIT portfolios | 1.5–3.0% | Mapletree, Sila, Digital Realty disclosures |
| Annual escalators, specialist single assets | 2.5% | StratCap, Expedient disclosures |
| WALE at portfolio acquisition | 6.7–9.1 years | REIT acquisition announcements |
| Fresh sale-leaseback term | 15–16 years | StratCap and carrier switch-site transactions |
All rows as compiled in StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026.
The spread between a Sila-type portfolio at about 5.8% (dgtlinfra, 2021) and telco-credit singles at 7.0 to 8.5% (StackedAI analysis, roll-up workbook, 2026) reflects credit, vintage and lot size more than any sector cap rate; the buyer prices the credit and the term, not the building.
What do AI-era NNN data center leases look like?
- Term and escalators. The Hut 8 and Fluidstack agreement covers 245 MW on a 15-year term with $7.0B of contracted revenue, up to $17.7B with extensions (DCD, Dec 2025). StackedAI records 15-year base terms with 3.0% escalators as the AI-era template (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
- Hyperscaler backstops. Google backs roughly $1.3B of Fluidstack’s lease obligations at TeraWulf’s 168 MW site, which carries about $9.5B of contracted revenue (TeraWulf press release, Oct 2025). The tenant is a neocloud; the credit underwritten is investment grade.
- Public debt on single-tenant leases. Fleet Data Centers’ $8.4B of 2026 senior secured notes, priced at 5.875% and 6.500%, are backed by a 197-month NNN lease to an unnamed AA-rated tenant (Fleet Data Centers 2026 notes, as compiled in StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). A single-tenant AA NNN lease now unlocks public debt at 5.9 to 6.5%.
- Bank and securitized debt. Top-credit tenants finance at spreads in the low 200 basis points at up to 85% loan-to-cost; non-credit tenants 200 to 300 basis points wider at 70 to 80% (JLL, North America Data Center Report Midyear 2026, Aug 2026). Data center ABS and CMBS outstanding grew from $4B in 2020 to $61B in 2026 year-to-date (Structured Finance Association, Research Corner, Jul 2026).
Why does this matter for private equity and family offices?
Bond-like cash flows with a real-asset floor. A 15-year NNN lease to investment-grade credit with 2.5 to 3% escalators (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026) behaves more like a corporate bond than an operating data center, with a residual that sits on a grid connection that took more than 5 years to obtain for projects reaching operation in 2025 (LBNL, Queued Up: 2026 Edition, May 2026).
A scarcity premium not yet priced into a series. Stabilized asset sales fell to about $3B in 2025, down roughly 50% year on year (CBRE, North America Data Center Trends H2 2025, Feb 2026), and only 7% of surveyed investors prefer stabilized acquisitions against 62% for opportunistic development (CBRE investor survey via Bisnow, Aug 2025). Fewer trades mean fewer comps and fewer competing bids for a class with 35 identified pure-enterprise leases (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
Origination creates new paper. Competing for 35 leases is a poor strategy; originating a sale-leaseback with a corporate owner is the alternative, and StackedAI’s Sale-Leaseback Calculus shows why owners engage: a 10 MW facility at $130 to 150 per kW per month on an NNN structure, capitalized at 5.5%, implies a gross value of $284 to 327M against a replacement cost of $70 to 100M (StackedAI analysis, Sale-Leaseback Calculus, Mar 2026). That gap is the power premium, a reason to sell that did not exist before North American vacancy settled at 1% for three consecutive years (JLL, North America Data Center Report Midyear 2026, Aug 2026). Structuring options are in data center transaction structures.
Where will the next 100 enterprise-credit leases come from?
The workbook’s fifth tranche is a sourcing map rather than a count (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026).
| Channel | What it surfaces | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| GSA Inventory of Owned and Leased Properties | Federal data center leases and expirations | Government credit, published terms |
| EDGAR full-text search: “sale-leaseback” and “data center” | Corporate SLBs in 10-K and 8-K filings | Disclosed even without a press release |
| ABS presale and ABS-15G tenant tables (Sabey, QTS, Vantage and peers) | Per-lease tenant, region and term in securitized pools | Verified lease tapes reveal enterprise tenants |
| Specialist owner portfolios | Single-asset enterprise leases | Small owners recycle capital on a schedule |
| Carrier switch-site disposals | Switch and network facilities sold with carrier leaseback | Largest historical source of the class |
| County recorded memoranda of lease | Unannounced NNN leases in target Tier-2 metros | Grantor and grantee searches find recorded leases |
Source: StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026.
The majority of sub-$50M NNN data center deals never list (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026), so an investor who runs these channels sees the paper before the listing market does. The same channels feed StackedAI’s Tier-2 brownfield conversion pipeline, because an enterprise willing to sign a leaseback often owns a facility that can be converted to AI density.
How StackedAI applies this
StackedAI maintains the NNN DC Lease Universe as a living workbook and refreshes it against primary filings before any figure is used in an engagement. For sponsors, the tranche structure separates verified property-level leases from portfolio-level estimates when sizing a net-lease strategy. For corporate owners, the pricing benchmarks and the Sale-Leaseback Calculus frame what a leaseback would release and which buyers would compete for the paper. The firm’s advisory services page describes how sourcing and transaction advisory are scoped.
Frequently asked questions
How many NNN data center leases exist in the United States?
StackedAI’s NNN DC Lease Universe identifies 442 US NNN or net data center leases across four source tranches (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). That is a count of identifiable leases, not the whole market; a long tail of unannounced single-asset leases surfaces only through county records and ABS filings.
Why are there so few enterprise-credit NNN data center leases?
Enterprises own data centers as property and equipment, so the asset never becomes a lease. Where enterprise credit does sit on a net lease it is usually a carrier leaseback; carriers account for roughly 80 of the roughly 100 credit-filtered leases (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). New paper appears only when a corporate owner elects a sale-leaseback.
Do diversified net-lease REITs own data centers?
Not materially. StackedAI’s universe records Gladstone Commercial as explicitly excluding data centers and W. P. Carey’s exposure as de minimis (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026). The class trades through specialists (Five 9s Digital, StratCap, Lincoln Rackhouse, Aphorio Carter, Tenet Equity, Menlo Equities), Singapore-listed REITs and COPT Defense.
What cap rate does an NNN data center lease trade at?
Published benchmarks run from about 5.8% for a 29-asset Sila portfolio (dgtlinfra, 2021) to 6.6% for Digital Realty’s powered-shell portfolio (Mapletree Industrial Trust, 2020), 7.0 to 8.5% for telco-credit NNN leases (StackedAI analysis, roll-up workbook, 2026) and 7.5 to 8.5% development yields on 15-year hyperscaler leases (Alantra, Data Center M&A Review, 2024).
What lease terms do AI-era NNN data center leases carry?
Fresh AI-era leases run 15-year base terms with 3.0% annual escalators, as in the Hut 8 and Fluidstack 245 MW, 15-year, $7.0B agreement (DCD, Dec 2025). Hyperscaler credit backstops are becoming a feature: Google backs roughly $1.3B of Fluidstack lease obligations at TeraWulf’s 168 MW site (TeraWulf press release, Oct 2025).
How can a family office or PE fund get exposure to enterprise NNN data center leases?
Three routes: buy from a specialist or Singapore REIT when it divests, buy a single carrier switch site in the $10 to 15M ticket range (StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe, Jul 2026), or originate a sale-leaseback with a corporate owner. Only origination creates new paper rather than competing for the existing 35 pure-enterprise leases.
What is the difference between a powered-shell NNN lease and a turnkey lease?
In a powered-shell lease the tenant installs and owns the mechanical and electrical fit-out, so the landlord’s capital is roughly 35 to 45% of a turnkey build (StackedAI analysis, transaction structures framework, 2026). Turnkey leases include the fit-out, carry more landlord capex and obsolescence risk, and price on development yield rather than cap rate.
Sources
- StackedAI analysis, NNN DC Lease Universe workbook, Jul 2026 (internal, aggregated findings only)
- StackedAI analysis, Transaction structures framework, 2026 (internal)
- StackedAI analysis, Tier-2 brownfield conversion thesis, 2026 (internal)
- StackedAI analysis, Sale-Leaseback Calculus in a Power-Constrained Market, Mar 2026, https://stackedai.net/blog/sale-leaseback-calculus-power-constrained-market/
- Alantra, Data Center M&A Review, 2024 (as compiled in the NNN DC Lease Universe)
- Mapletree Industrial Trust, acquisition of Digital Realty powered-shell portfolio, 2020 (as compiled in the NNN DC Lease Universe)
- dgtlinfra, Sila Realty Trust data center portfolio analysis, 2021 (as compiled in the NNN DC Lease Universe)
- The Boulder Group, Net Lease Market Report Q1 2026 (as compiled in the NNN DC Lease Universe)
- Fleet Data Centers, 2026 senior secured notes offering, public (as compiled in the NNN DC Lease Universe)
- JLL, North America Data Center Report Midyear 2026, Aug 2026, https://www.jll.com/en-us/insights/market-dynamics/north-america-data-centers
- JLL via Data Center Dynamics, Aug 2026, https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/jll-data-center-demand-exceeds-expectations-doubles-year-over-year/
- CBRE, North America Data Center Trends H2 2025, Feb 2026, https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/north-america-data-center-trends-h2-2025
- CBRE investor survey via Bisnow, Aug 2025, https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/data-center/untapped-opportunity-data-center-asset-sales-slump-even-as-new-development-booms-130597
- Structured Finance Association, Research Corner, Jul 2026, https://structuredfinance.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/SFA-Research-Corner_How-Data-Center-ABS-and-CMBS-Fit-in-a-Broader-Financing-Ecosystem.pdf
- Data Center Dynamics, Hut 8 signs 245MW capacity deal with Fluidstack, Dec 2025, https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/hut-8-signs-245mw-capacity-deal-with-fluidstack-as-part-of-multi-gigawatt-partnership-with-anthropic/
- TeraWulf press release, Oct 2025, https://investors.terawulf.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/121/terawulf-expands-strategic-partnership-with-fluidstack-through-new-168-mw-ai-compute-joint-venture
- LBNL, Queued Up: 2026 Edition, May 2026, https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/queued-2026-edition-characteristics