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Issue 80: NextDC Shares Fall 40 Percent as Power Delays Stall Melbourne Data Center

Permanent copy of issue 80. Today's issue is always the front page.

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Australian data center operator NextDC lost about 40 percent of its market value on Wednesday after cutting its revenue forecast, because community opposition has stalled the grid upgrade its largest Melbourne site needs. Nvidia, by contrast, has put up to $164.5 billion of guarantees and commitments behind the data centers that buy its chips, The Information reported from the company's filings, while in Tasmania a developer is already canvassing farmers for land next to a new transmission line. On the desk side, Perplexity released a mode that runs its Computer agent entirely on a Mac with 36 GB of memory or more.

Date: 2026-10-21
Updated: 2026-10-21 06:30
Status: LIVE

Broadcast

The cheapest part of a data center used to be the wire that fed it. NextDC has just learned otherwise: its Melbourne customers signed contracts, but the local distributor stopped work on the grid upgrade after residents objected, and the market took two-fifths of the company's value in a day. Nvidia is answering the same strain with its balance sheet, standing behind up to $164.5 billion of leases and capacity purchases so that its customers can keep ordering chips. That support keeps central computing moving, but it also concentrates the risk in one company. Perplexity's local agent is a smaller story with a clearer lesson for readers: a Mac with enough memory can now do real work on private files without a server at all.

Watch

• Whether NextDC sells development sites at its investor meeting, and whether other Australian operators report similar grid delays
• Whether Nvidia adds further guarantees as neocloud stocks and bonds weaken
• Independent tests of Perplexity's local Computer mode on Macs with 36 GB and with less memory

Stories

NextDC shares fall 40 percent as power delays stall its Melbourne data center

Australian data center operator NextDC cut its fiscal 2027 revenue forecast to between A$475 million and A$500 million, from A$615 million to A$640 million, after the electricity distributor Jemena suspended grid upgrades at its M3 Melbourne site amid community opposition. The shares fell 39.5 percent on Wednesday, and Jemena does not expect to resume the work before February 2027.
-- A signed customer contract is worth little if the local wires cannot carry the load, and residents' objections have now cost a listed operator about two-fifths of its market value in a day. Every month a cluster waits for power is a month in which the hardware on a desk, which needs only a wall socket, keeps working.
2026-10-21 / CNBC / energy, chip / local / #nextdc-shares-fall-40-percent-as-power-delays-st

Nvidia stands behind up to $164.5 billion of data center commitments

Nvidia has put as much as $164.5 billion of guarantees and commitments behind the data centers that run its chips, according to figures from its latest quarterly filing tallied by The Information, including a lease guarantee of up to $105 billion for the Ohio campus SB Energy is building for OpenAI. Nvidia has also agreed to buy any unsold CoreWeave capacity through April 2032 and has invested or pledged more than $7 billion in AI cloud providers.
-- The largest seller of AI chips is now also the guarantor of last resort for many of its buyers, so lenders to cloud companies are partly lending against Nvidia's balance sheet. That keeps cluster orders flowing today, but it ties the health of central computing to a single company's willingness to keep underwriting it.
2026-10-21 / Yahoo Finance, citing The Information / chip / central / #nvidia-stands-behind-up-to-164-5-billion-of-data

Perplexity lets its Computer agent run entirely on a Mac

Perplexity on Tuesday released a fully local mode for its Computer agent on Apple silicon Macs, running the Qwen 3.6 model and its own PPLX Pro model on the machine for Pro, Max and Enterprise subscribers. The company recommends at least 36 GB of unified memory, and users can still choose to send a task to the cloud when it needs more capability.
-- A consumer AI company is now shipping an agent that reads mail, messages and spreadsheets without sending them to a server, which is the practical case for owning the hardware. The 36 GB recommendation also shows where the line falls: the base Mac mini cannot meet it, so memory, not processor speed, decides who can run AI at home.
2026-10-20 / AppleInsider / efficiency / local / #perplexity-lets-its-computer-agent-run-entirely-

Tasmanian farmers are cold-called to sell land for a 300-megawatt data center

A Sydney consultancy has been telephoning residents near Nook in north-west Tasmania about buying farmland next to a substation on the new north-west transmission line, Greens MP Vica Bayley told a state parliamentary committee on Wednesday. The acting coordinator-general confirmed that a 200 to 300 megawatt data center proposal for the north-west is at the feasibility stage, but the proponent has not been named.
-- Developers are now hunting for land by its distance from a transmission line, which turns rural substations into the scarce asset of the AI build-out. The same day that grid delays sank NextDC in Melbourne, cluster builders were looking for power wherever a fresh line has been strung.
2026-10-21 / ABC News (Australia) / energy / central / #tasmanian-farmers-are-cold-called-to-sell-land-f

Axis
local [#########################-----] central
Score: 82   clusters still winning   down 1
NextDC's collapse shows that local grids and local residents can stall a contracted cluster for years, and Nvidia's $164.5 billion of guarantees shows how much support the central build-out now needs to keep moving. Perplexity's fully local agent gives the desk side a working product, so the score eases one point to 82.

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