Permission to add power, not chip supply, is now the binding limit on US AI capacity growth.
Texas ordered its environmental regulator on Sept 21 to stop issuing new data center permits until grid and water audits finish. That closes the self-powered route around the August grid moratorium. The same day Google agreed to fund about 96 MW of nuclear uprates at Georgia Power under a new tariff.
The layer moving is regulation of power. Builders that fund their own generation keep adding capacity. Builders that depend on grid queues wait. ERCOT's queue holds over 474 GW, and about 90% of new requests are data centers.
Capital keeps arriving regardless. AMD briefly crossed a $1 trillion market value on Sept 21, and Alibaba set a 20 GW target by 2032. The governing signal is Distribution Capture: power and permits are the chokepoint.
Texas lifts the TCEQ and ERCOT freezes by Dec 31, 2026 without new pay-your-own-way conditions for data centers, and ERCOT resumes batch interconnection studies on its earlier schedule.
