POSITION
DATE
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OPERATING PARTNER- DATA CENTER STRATEGY & SITING
October 2025
https://www.denhamcapital.com/
Andy Lane @ CFS Partners
M +414 807 4085
E andy@criticalfacility.com
DENHAM CAPITAL
Founded in 2004, Denham Capital (Denham) is a global investment firm, making both private equity and debt investments. Denham invests in power and related infrastructure as well as critical metals and minerals. With over 40 professionals across three global offices, Denham has raised more than $12 billion and invested in companies and projects spanning more than 30 countries. They focus on the entire energy and commodities value chain, providing capital and expertise to grow businesses and operate efficiently. Denham establishes long-term partnerships with entrepreneurs and companies who share their vision for growth and value creation. Denham’s investment professionals apply their deep operational and industry experience in partnership with management teams to achieve long-term investment objectives.
SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE OVERVIEW
Sustainable Infrastructure – https://www.denhamcapital.com/sustainable-infrastructure/
Denham’s Sustainable Infrastructure equity platform has deployed over $2 billion of capital across 20+ years, investing in global mid-market businesses developing, building or operating power assets (e.g., thermal power generation, battery energy storage, and renewable power) as well as other sustainable infrastructure sectors. Denham controlled businesses have developed or built over 10GW of power generation assets, with 50%+ in large scale thermal power solutions. Leveraging a buy-and-build approach, Denham seeks to unlock additional alpha while supporting the growth and operational excellence of portfolio companies. To date, the team has acquired, developed, and operated more than 100 assets worldwide.
– Equity – https://www.denhamcapital.com/infrastructure-equity/
Creating value-add returns by investing in global mid-market infrastructure assets that generate inflation-protected cash flows and can unlock potential alpha through our buy-and-build strategy.
– Credit – https://www.denhamcapital.com/infrastructure-credit/
Direct lending investment strategy targeting investment grade and below investment grade sustainable infrastructure companies, assets, and securities.
Investment Framework –
Denham’s investment philosophy is to manage investors’ capital as if it were their own, where they are maximizing value for their investors in line with the guidelines they have set or agreed to with their investors. Leveraging their investment teams decades of expertise building global infrastructure projects, Denham focuses on rigorous underwriting of their acquisitions, while driving value for their clients and meeting the highest sustainability standards.
Select Investments –
The team’s global reach has allowed for current, curated opportunities from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Latin America, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Japan.
CHAPTER
Denham has developed, built, and/or owned 10+GW of power plants (5GW renewables + 5GW thermal fire generation) across 6 continents and 30 countries over the last 20 years. Through recent power development initiatives and partnerships, Denham realized wholesale data center developers find sites that are suitable from a data center perspective but could benefit from a partner with expertise in power solutions. These two factors prove perfectly complementary vs competitive which is encouraging mutually enabling partnership. Not only do the existing site prospects become more interesting, the pipeline of prospective locations for development grows.
This convergence of explosive data center growth and grid interconnection delays has created a new specialized market category with limited competition. Traditional players include:
– Utility companies which are constrained by regulatory processes and grid capacity limitations
– Independent power producers focus on grid-connected wholesale markets
– Data center developers lack specialized power generation development expertise
– Equipment providers don’t offer integrated solutions to this extent
Denham is capitalizing on this market opportunity with known competitive advantages:
– Specialized Expertise: Deep power generation and utility knowledge
– Technology Portfolio: all-of-the-above technology approach to meet varying customer needs
– Time to Market: Inside the fence solutions accelerate data center implementation for tenants
– First-Mover Advantage: Early entry into emerging market category
– Partnership Model: Shared risk approach attractive to data center developers
– Dual-Phase Revenue: Unique primary-to-backup transition plus grid services maximizes asset utilization
CHARTER
In 2025, Denham formed Gray Oak Power as its first dedicated platform in the datacenter space. Gray Oak offers customized power solutions for data center developers addressing the critical bottleneck in the rapidly expanding U.S. data center market: power infrastructure that cannot keep pace with explosive AI-driven demand growth. Their mission is to provide customized and speedy power solutions to 50+MW data center development interests facing multi-year grid interconnection delays. They will do this through a variety of power technologies including gas fired generation, energy storage, fuel cells, and/or renewables including wind, solar and hydro. Assets will be designed to be hydrogen- or carbon capture-ready when these technologies are economically viable.
Gray Oak provides a specialized ‘Power-as-a-Service’ model and accrues value in the form of ownership interests in the power solution for data centers where they will sell firm power on a contracted basis. In the future, Gray Oak may expand into broader datacenter campus development, construction and operations.
Gray Oak sits side by side with the data center developer and end customer in a mutually compatible and inter-reliant relationship to iterate and define what each solution needs to look like, knowing no two configurations are going to look the same. The data center developer doesn’t need to wait 5-7 years for power and Denham isn’t in the business of building and operating data centers, yet.
The Operating Partner will be applying his / her expertise to address important questions:
– Inform what datacenter devleopers and tenants are solving for in terms of time quality of power?
– How do we attack existing and new markets in the right way?
– How should we think about reliability level as a function of each datacenter’s application?
– What are the environmental attributes that customers are looking for? Sensitivity level?
– Is the regulatory environment accommodating?
– How do we find the team to help address as we grow?
– What new opportunities exist to empower Denham’s capital and power development expertise?
Gray Oak also offers a comprehensive risk mitigation framework and approach to include
– Development Risk Mitigation – Shared Risk Model: Partner with data center developers to share development costs until tenant PPA has been secured
– Financial Risk Management – Project Finance Structure: Non-recourse financing limiting corporate exposure
– Operational Risk Controls – Experienced critical infrastructure operations, redundant systems, and predictive maintenance teams
– Regulatory & Environmental Compliance: Proactive regulatory coordination and community stakeholder engagement and relations
Initial conversations have been very well received resulting in a growing a pipeline of partners and individual sites. Denham is feeling the opportunity cost of time already and therefore investing significant time ensuring these early-stage partnerships create precedent for promotion. The learning stage is over and Denham is hitting its stride with Gray Oak. The Operating Partner will be jumping on a fast-moving train which is only expected to pick up momentum.
DENHAM LEADERSHIP TEAM
STUART PORTER
Founder & Managing Partner
Stuart Porter is a Founder, Managing Partner and serves as the firm’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer. Stu brings over 29 years of senior investment experience to Denham. Stu serves on the Investment Committee and Valuation Committee. Prior to founding Denham, Stu was a founding partner of Sowood Capital Management LP and, prior thereto, was employed as a Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Harvard Management Company, Inc. where he focused on public and private transactions in the energy and commodities sectors. Stu previously worked for Bacon Investments and at J. Aron, a division of Goldman Sachs. While at J. Aron, he worked on the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index desk. Prior to joining J. Aron, Stu was a self-employed trader at the Chicago Board of Trade and was employed by Cargill Incorporated in Minnetonka, Minnesota in the Financial Markets Division.
JUSTIN DEANGELIS
Partner
LinkedIn Profile
Justin DeAngelis is a Partner at Denham Capital and the Global Head of Denham Sustainable Infrastructure (“DSI”) overseeing both equity and credit strategies. Justin brings over 25 years of global investment and operational experience, and is a member of the Investment, Valuation, and Sustainability Committees for DSI.
TIMOTHY RADCLIFF
Managing Director
LinkedIn Profile
Tim Radcliff is a Managing Director on the Sustainable Infrastructure Equity team. He has nearly 20 years of experience in the financial services industry including 15 years in the power, renewables, and energy transition sectors.
CULTURE
Denham Capital sponsors entrepreneurs, delivering financial resources and industry expertise needed to create and grow successful infrastructure and resource businesses. Built on a foundation of experience, fairness, economic rationale, flexibility and trust, DC brings these values into every opportunity they pursue. Their deep industry sector knowledge along with a disciplined approach centered around fairness and shared success make them an ideal partner. Socially responsible development and stewardship are rooted in their culture and investment philosophy, allowing them to remain ahead of the curve as markets evolve.
IN THE NEWS
September 2025 – Babcock & Wilcox and Denham Capital Announce Strategic Partnership to Convert Existing Coal Plants to Power Data Centers in the U.S. and Europe
September 2025 – Ceiba Energy Closes Sale of Jandaia Power Plant to Eneva
June 2025 – New Project Media Interview
November 2024 – Denham Capital appoints Justin DeAngelis as Global Head of Sustainable Infrastructure
October 2024 – Infrastructure’s Vote of Confidence
Denham Sustainable Infrastructure – Sustainability Report 2024 – SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2024
June 2023 – Denham Capital Sustainable Infrastructure Appoints Tim Radcliff as a Managing Director
OPERATING PARTNER – DATA CENTER STRATEGY
Denham Capital (DC) is partnering with the world’s most progressive hyperscalers, cloud providers, neo-cloud, and technology firms to empower scaled development through progressive power and energy solutions. As such, they are seeking an Operating Partner (OP) with deep data center development expertise to help accelerate value creation across their existing portfolio and new initiatives.
The Operating Partner (OP) will lead market strategy, site selection & acquisition, and new site development in conjunction with Denham portfolio companies, partners, and end customers. He / She serves as a strategic leader working directly with senior investment professionals and portfolio company management teams to include Market Development, Commercial Management, Sales, Solution Engineering, Design Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Finance. The OP will engage extensively to author and drive business plans, partnering propositions, and execution of solutions for new market developments and expansions.
More specifically the OP will lead –
Strategic Site Selection –
– Lead the process of evaluating and selecting locations for data center development in existing and emerging markets in line with DC and Partner’s strategic objectives.
– Oversee all aspects of complex site selection transactions, including the acquisition and utilization of existing infrastructure and resources, through final closing.
– Lead datacenter siting analysis, conducting initial site assessments, feasibility studies, and due diligence on access to fiber, water, governances, incentives, and ease of permitting.
Negotiation –
– Oversee all aspects of new location negotiations with landowners, community influencers, broker discussions, and deal lifecycle management
Strategic Leadership –
– Partner with investment teams during diligence and deal execution to assess technical, regulatory, and operational feasibility of data center development opportunities.
– Serve as a trusted advisor to partner company CEOs and management, providing guidance on site acquisition, design, sustainability, and operational optimization.
Industry Expertise –
– Stay ahead of market trends in hyperscale, colocation, and edge data centers, particularly where they intersect with sustainable energy and grid interconnection.
– Build and manage relationships with utilities, regulators, technology partners, contractors, and equipment providers.
– Identify opportunities for cost reduction and scalability within partner companies, ensuring alignment with the firm’s investment thesis.
Market Evaluation and Monitoring –
– Define and continuously update geographic strategies including prioritization of regions relative to hyperscaler interest and project characteristics.
– Review key metrics, data, and market details for identified markets and sites, and complete initial site assessments and diligence packages for internal review.
– Track and monitor sophisticated real estate transactions and activity in target markets to stay informed of market trends.
Collaboration and Communication –
– Collaborate with Market Development, Sales, Marketing, and New Site Development teams with partner firms to align land acquisition goals with the partnership’s strategy.
– Engage with power development, commercial, and finance teams to ensure offtake, procurement, and project timeline are suitable relative to partner requirements.
– Review status updates from the team of all projects in the Site Selection portfolio, including risks, schedule, quality, and budget and prepare for reporting holistically to stakeholders.
Process Implementation and Improvement –
– Establish best practices and playbooks for greenfield data center development, emphasizing energy efficiency, resiliency, and integration with power sources.
– Implement and improve processes to capture information on borrower or project changes that may require lender consent or notification.
– Drive standardization of loan agreements, including representations, warranties, reporting, and lender consent rights.
Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management –
– Stay up to date with relevant real estate legislation and anticipated changes.
– Ensure compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements, legislation, zoning laws, environmental regulations, and other governing ordinances during the acquisition and development process.
KEY QUALIFYING CRITERIA
Strategy & Siting – Demonstrated success in data center location strategy and siting determination for hyperscale, wholesale, and AI / Neo-Cloud development requirements.
Scope & Significance – History of broad and complex data center development engagements spanning locations, customers, design topology, size, and stakeholders.
Vested Interest – Track record of partnering with investors, partner companies, and customers in a collective value creation role.
Technical Knowledge – In-depth understanding of land acquisition, zoning, environmental regulations, infrastructure requirements, and data center development principles.
Analytical & Financial – Strong business and financial acumen with experience in project investment, finance, IRR, ROI, discounted cash flow analysis, etc.
Project Management – Proven project management abilities, with experience strategically partnering with cross-functional, geographically dispersed teams to meet execution timelines.
Negotiation & Communication – Excellent negotiation, contract management, and communication skills to work with and positively influence diverse stakeholders.
Entrepreneurial – A thoughtful, creative, and progressive mindset who thrives in accountability for self-directed strategy and execution.
WHY CONSIDER THIS OPPORTUNITY WITH DENHAM?
Precedent – DC’s history of portfolio company investment and development speaks for itself. Not only do they have a track record of success, it’s inherent in their business model and plans.
Progressive – The business model is progressive by nature in terms of the market opportunity, timing, and resources DC brings to bear, not to mention lack of competition.
Focus – DC’s success results from well planned, prepared, and intense commitments to execute business plans. They are capitalizing on a known value proposition which empowers the market.
Chapter – The OP enters an incredibly unique chapter in a historical market growth evolution in a strategic role determining and defining outcomes that set enduring standards into the future.
Impact – The OP will be extensively engaged at the table at the onset of pipeline and strategic partner discussions through to execution and realization of resulting value creation.
Creativity – DC is known for embracing and manifesting new ideas from it’s professionals who identify opportunities in the market and build related business cases to pursue.
Culture – DC’s culture embodies the dynamics of entrepreneurial DNA which requires creative, confident, forward-thinking professionals who solve problems rather than wait for answers.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
The compensation package will be determined relative to the credentials and experience of the final candidate selected by Denham Capital. The package is expected to include a competitive base salary, annual performance bonus compensation, long-term incentive compensation based on partnership development performance, and a comprehensive benefits program.
Benefits include but not limited to medical, dental, and vision coverage, life and AD&D, short and long-term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, participation in a 401k program that includes company match, and many other additional voluntary benefits.
SEARCH PROCESS
Following a thorough exchange of information including increasing disclosures on Denham Capital, project portfolio, resume, and Key Qualifying Criteria, CFS Partners anticipates recommending a short list of candidates to Timothy Radcliff and Justin DeAngelis in early November. The selected finalist will be presented with a compelling and competitive offer contingent on background check and positive references.