Communities are sitting at a table with the AI economy. The question is whether they have the instruments, the frameworks, and the negotiating position to claim their share of what gets built.
I have real concerns about the environmental and community impacts of data centers. Energy consumption, water usage, land use, and long-term community tradeoffs deserve serious scrutiny. I'm not here to advocate for data center development. But here's the reality, they are being built, at scale, at speed, and in communities that had little say in the decision. The conversation needs an upgrade.
Every generation has its infrastructure moment. Ports, railroads, and the interstate highway system each reshaped the American economy. They share a pattern: the communities that hosted the infrastructure absorbed the disruption. The communities that owned it captured the returns. The gap between those two positions is where wealth was built or lost for generations.
The AI economy is that moment. The negotiation is already underway.
The standard frame is real estate. A data center comes to town, brings construction jobs, maybe a handful of permanent positions, pays some property taxes. Some call it economic development and move on. The capital model underneath, who owns the upside, who holds equity in the systems shaping the local economy, no one talks about. That silence is the negotiation.
Every major enterprise, institution, and government system is actively building on AI technology at speed. The communities that recognize this early will move beyond community benefits and negotiate for participation in the economic value these systems create.
"Most communities are negotiating data centers like real estate projects when they should be negotiating them like ports, railroads, and utilities."
The untapped model is to explore new ways for communities and residents to build wealth and share in the economic upside of data centers. None of these structures exist at scale yet. The design work is building them into a coherent negotiating position before the terms of this economy are set.
Communities owning partial digital utility interests in the systems they host, structured like public utility stakes rather than tax abatements.
Community land trusts structured to participate in the upside generated by facilities sited on or adjacent to community-held land.
Public entities negotiating compute royalties or digital utility structures tied to throughput, modeled on mineral rights and telecommunications franchise agreements.
Pension funds, CDFIs, and community investment vehicles participating in the capital stack as equity holders, generating returns that flow back into local economies.
Long-term labor agreements with direct pathways into AI and cloud economies, structured to build lasting careers rather than one-time training programs.
Traditional capital structures optimize for extraction and risk transfer. The developer captures the upside, the community absorbs the externalities. Most Community Benefits Agreements were designed to mitigate harm. The AI economy requires a different framework entirely.
The design question is: how do communities participate in enterprise value creation tied to the economy shaping their future? Many communities know exactly what they want. The gap is in the instruments, the legal frameworks, and the intermediary structures that would make that participation real. That is a design problem. And design problems can be solved.
The communities that get this right will build lasting economic power. The communities that treat it as real estate will look back at this moment the way rust belt cities look back at the deals they cut with manufacturers in the 1960s, with one difference worth naming: those factories at least employed thousands. A large data center employs thirty to fifty people. The extraction is higher. The employment dividend is smaller. The design gap is wider.
There are communities, municipalities, organizations, and even energy companies already exploring new possibilities of shared value in the AI economy. If you are designing or testing new models or approaches in this space, I'd love to hear from you.
Welcome to the new chapter of capital.
Mambu Sherman is the Managing Director of Calpe Labs, a US-based capital innovation lab and venture studio. Calpe builds the instruments, intermediary structures, and operating models to unlock capital for entrepreneurs and communities the current system wasn't designed to serve.