“It’d be a lot cooler if you did…” - Wooderson Mike Intrator

Bending the knee isn’t just for Donny Politics anymore. On Friday, the Ingratiator (read: CoreWeave Mike Intrator) slid into Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa’s DMs with a letter. The ask? A chance to work with her transition team on “the responsible completion of permitted projects” and “clear, durable standards for future development.” Friendly reminder, Hinojosa is the Democrat who beat Greg Abbott on Tuesday after promising to give state wide data centers the Old Yeller treatment. 

Per Mike’s love letter: “You have made clear that data center growth must work for Texas. We strongly support those principles.” 

Why the sudden change of heart?

Welp, the AI crowd got bodied at the ballot box. Democrats ran partly on reining in the data center buildout, and they now hold 29 governors’ mansions, with plenty of them calling for statewide moratoriums. Hinojosa is the first Democrat to win the Texas governor’s race since 1990, and Texas holds roughly a quarter of all planned US data center capacity, per Goldman. So when moratorium fears hit Wall Street on Thursday, it was blood in the streets. The Dow dumped 1,833 points, the Nasdaq fell 5.5%, and CoreWeave got dunked on for about 10%.

For context, CoreWeave owns sh*tloads of Nvidia GPUs, and plenty of them sit in Texas, from a $1.6B site in Plano (tax abatements included) to a converted crypto mine in Denton. Most of it was bought with borrowed money. Its 2031 bonds traded at a 15.83% yield on Nov. 2 (read: junk with a capital J), and earnings drop Tuesday. Meaning, even if the pause only hits new approvals, a frozen permit pipeline has Mike god-level clenched. 

Hinojosa wants the pause to stick until the Legislature meets in January and passes “real protections.” Her wish list includes union labor, water protections, no more hush-hush NDAs, no higher power bills for Texans, and no more government cheese (read: the data center tax breaks that cost the state billions). Since winning, she’s warmed up a bit, telling CNN it “has to be a partnership that benefits Texans.”

Of course, back in August, when data center companies were applauding Abbott’s pause-and-audit plan, Gina also said this: “When the companies being regulated are cheering for the rules, you know the rules were written for them, not for Texans.” Which, fair. 

As for Abbott, he collected about $9M from data center-linked donors and still took the L. Our ex-VPOTUS (read: Elon Musk), who backed him, is coping: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.” 

Regardless, Mike is officially kneeling. Which he doesn’t mind (he’s been wearing kneepads for Jensen since 2023). Place your bets accordingly, friends. 

Until next time! 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does nto hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.