AI tenants now demand more than $5mn a day when data centres arrive late

Large AI tenants are demanding more than $5mn for every day a data-centre developer misses the promised delivery of power and facilities, up from roughly $1mn a day this spring. Seven months at the higher rate would exceed $1bn before accounting for rent that never starts. The penalty reflects what the tenant loses when reserved chips cannot run, but it can overwhelm the developer whose schedule also depends on utilities, equipment suppliers and permits.

Marsh designed a bespoke “delay-in-delivery” policy after a developer faced the earlier $1mn daily obligation. The distinction from ordinary delay-in-start-up insurance matters. Traditional cover generally responds when insured physical damage—such as a fire or broken equipment—delays completion. A substation, grid connection or commissioning process can simply arrive late with nothing physically damaged. The lease penalty still applies while the conventional policy may not.

This is one reason insurance for digital infrastructure is becoming a capital-market component rather than an administrative afterthought. S&P Global estimates about $10bn of data-centre premiums in 2026, roughly twice the global aviation-insurance market. Marsh says it recently placed more than $5bn of credit protection for a developer making long-term commitments to pay for utility infrastructure. Its Nimbus construction facility offers up to $2.7bn of capacity, while Aon's competing programme reaches $3.5bn.

Insurance does not remove schedule risk; it prices and redistributes it. Underwriters must decide which delays are measurable, who controls them and how much correlated exposure they are accumulating across projects that depend on the same utilities and suppliers. Developers may also respond by passing obligations to contractors or demanding looser delivery dates. The new product therefore reveals the underlying bargain: tenants are willing to sign enormous leases only if someone else absorbs the cost of idle compute. As daily penalties move into seven figures, that “someone” increasingly includes insurers and, behind them, the wider financial system.