Investment firm Coatue Management has established a new powered land venture called Next Frontier, designed to acquire land near large power sources for use by data center and cloud operators.

The firm's debut project involves a 430-megawatt campus in New Lebanon, Sullivan County, Indiana, developed in partnership with AI cloud company Fluidstack and backed financially by Google.

Next Frontier Takes Shape

Coatue's Next Frontier venture is focused on buying land proximate to significant power infrastructure to serve the growing demand from data center and cloud operators.

Tens of billions of dollars are reportedly set to flow into the venture. Founded in 1999, Coatue manages more than USD 70 billion in assets and has previously invested across a wide range of technology companies, including CoreWeave, Together AI, Firmus, Hut 8, Cerebras, SiFive, OpenAI, Anthropic, Stability.ai, Hugging Face, and Scale.

The firm has also recently provided financing to Brazilian data center firm Scala and invested in Asia-Pacific data center company DayOne.

Next Frontier has already signed a joint venture with Fluidstack, according to people familiar with the matter, and is also reportedly looking to serve Anthropic.

The connection between Next Frontier and the Indiana project was confirmed when law firm Latham and Watkins LLP noted in a post outlining its involvement in a recent notes issuance that Frontier Development Holdings LP was an affiliate of Next Frontier.

A USD 5.7 Billion Notes Issuance Funds the Indiana Campus

The financial structure underpinning the Indiana development was revealed in April, when Fitch Ratings provided ratings for senior secured notes from Meridian Arc HoldCo, a joint venture of Fluidstack Indiana Inc. and Frontier Holdings Indiana LLC.

The joint venture is issuing USD 5.7 billion in senior secured notes to build a data center with critical IT capacity of 430 megawatts. The proposed fixed-rate notes are set to mature in 2031.

According to Latham and Watkins, the proceeds from the notes will be used to fund the acquisition of an approximately 140-acre property comprising multiple parcels in New Lebanon, Sullivan County, Indiana.

The funds will also finance the development and construction of a 245-megawatt IT capacity turnkey data center, a separate 185-megawatt critical IT capacity turnkey data center, and an on-site electrical substation.

The project is anchored by a 15-year lease with Fluidstack that includes three five-year extension options.

Power for the campus will be provided by Hoosier Energy and WIN Energy.

Construction Timeline and Phased Delivery

The campus is being delivered in phases across a compressed construction schedule. The first 65-megawatt data hall is due to come online in July 2027. A further 300 megawatts is expected to be available by December 2026, with the remaining 320 megawatts targeted for completion by March 2027.

Google's Guarantee and Its Broader Role in the Fluidstack Ecosystem

As with several other deals involving Fluidstack, the Indiana project carries a financial guarantee from Google.

Under the arrangement, Google will assume the lease or pay a termination fee in the event that Fluidstack backs out of the agreement.

This guarantee structure has appeared in multiple Fluidstack-linked data center projects. Google has provided financial backing for other data center developments set to host Anthropic and Fluidstack, including projects involving Hut 8, Cipher, and TeraWulf.

Google has taken an equity stake in Cipher and TeraWulf as part of those arrangements. Google has also invested more than USD 3.75 billion into Anthropic across multiple earlier rounds, with court documents from 2025 revealing that it holds a 14 percent stake in the company.

Anthropic, best known for its Claude large language model, has pledged to invest USD50 billion in data centers in the United States with Fluidstack.

The Indiana campus appears to be a significant component of that commitment.

Indiana's Sullivan County Emerges as a Data Center Hub

The New Lebanon site sits within a broader industrial development in Sullivan County that is drawing significant infrastructure investment.

Earlier in May, developer Potentia announced that a new anchor tenant data center campus is being developed within its 2.1-gigawatt Heartland Industrial Park, also in Sullivan County, Indiana.

Potentia stated that up to USD 65 billion could be invested in the development by 2030, though it remains unclear whether the Next Frontier and Fluidstack development is the anchor tenant Potentia was referring to.

The 1,000-acre Heartland park is located outside New Lebanon, near Hallador Energy's one-gigawatt coal-powered Merom Generating Station.

Hallador acquired the plant from Hoosier Energy in 2022 and last year filed to expand it with 515 megawatts of natural gas capacity, signaling continued investment in the region's power generation base that is drawing data center developers to the area.