Hey! Thanks for being here for Edition #17. You're one of 265+ subscribers, and I genuinely appreciate every single one of you.
I've been thinking a lot about respect this week. I believe it's what keeps people together - and if you don't respect each other, there's no future. I've found business works the same way.
A deal is just two people deciding to trust each other for a few years. The ones that last aren't built on who was nicest in the first meeting. They're built on respect: telling the truth when it's bad news, picking up the phone when things go wrong, keeping your word even when it costs you, and wanting the other side to win too.
Lose that, and every conversation feels like a fight. Every small problem turns into a big one. But I've learned you can win it back - show up, keep your word, do it every day. That works at home, and it works in business.
Let's get into it.
The Pentagon just became a 30-year lender. The US Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital has committed up to $1.5B to Wolfspeed, America's biggest silicon carbide chipmaker - a company that was coming out of Chapter 11 just a year ago. The structure is a senior secured, delayed-draw term loan with a 30-year tenor, plus warrants for up to 7.5% of fully diluted equity, issued as each tranche is funded.
No private lender writes a 30-year loan to a company that just restructured. So the OSC isn't pricing credit risk - it's pricing supply chain risk. Silicon carbide and gallium nitride chips sit inside radar and missile defence, drones, electronic warfare, directed energy weapons and high-performance propulsion. The same chips manage power in EVs and AI data centres. One supplier, two strategic customers. And it picks up the government-ownership thread from a couple of editions back: Washington used to hand out grants. Now it lends long, takes security, and keeps a slice of the equity. Is the US government becoming the next big lender?
Also this week:
DayOne files for a $5B Nasdaq IPO. We last covered DayOne in Edition #4 - now the Singapore-based data centre builder has filed with the SEC to list under DODC, targeting up to $5B at a reported $20B valuation. H1 2026 revenue more than tripled to $512M (from $151.5M), while net losses grew sixfold to $81.9M. That's what building physical AI infrastructure looks like: spend first, get paid later. Four months after a $4.5B Series C led by Coatue and Hillhouse, they're back for more - the private money got in early, and now public markets decide what the build-out is worth.
Ken Griffin pays $36.7M an acre in Miami. The Citadel founder closed on roughly 30 acres in Wynwood from developer Moishe Mana for about $1.1B, all cash, no debt, no partners - the largest land assemblage in Florida history. Mana turned $70M into $1.1B by waiting 16 years and turning down residential developers. The land becomes Carnegie Mellon Miami, part of Griffin's record $3B gift to CMU. Zoning is still pending, but the playbook is clear: Griffin isn't really buying land, he's buying a pipeline of graduates. Is Florida winning the talent war?
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
A US private credit lender now lending into Vietnam. His firm started in the US building real estate funded through EB-5 - capital that costs about 0.25%, because those investors want a green card, not a return. Now they're lending into Vietnam, where local banks charge 12-14%, if they lend at all. His mandate: $3M+ tickets, reliable cash flow, minority stakes on equity, syndicated debt only (never the sole lender), manufacturing preferred over real estate, real estate debt in major cities only, and hard assets he can take if the loan isn't repaid. When I asked about lending against real estate outside the big cities, he didn't hesitate: "Very tricky."
A deal I underwrote this week:
A $35M gas plant in western Pennsylvania.
This is a private gas plant designed to power AI data centres built right next to it. The money comes from two places: selling the land to data centre operators, and selling them the power. The raise is $35M at the early stage, for a 500MW-1GW plant that would cost $1.6B-$2.5B to build. There are 500 acres for sale at $500-700k per acre, and a 15+5 year power contract targeted at $0.14/kWh. Investors are offered an 8-15% pref plus upside, with a 25-30% IRR target.
It's very early. There are no permits, no signed buyer and no turbines yet - the $35M pays to lock up the land and get permits. Big data centre names are talking, but none have signed. The location logic is real: it sits on top of Marcellus gas, with gas assumed at $3.30/MMBtu.
On downside, investors get capital back first plus the pref, and permits and gas deals carry value to a buyer. But the pref only pays at an exit event, and if permits or buyers fail, it can go to zero. The exit is either a land sale to a data centre operator or a strategic/infra fund buying in after permits - and the timing is set by the buyer, not investors.
My verdict: Medium fit for family offices. Weak fit for private credit. Weak fit for institutions.
Know how the deal actually reaches the money.
The most useful thing from my Vietnam lender conversation wasn't his criteria - it was where his deals come from.
Japanese and Korean investors don't hunt for Vietnamese deals themselves. They ask their banks. Those banks call two of Vietnam's biggest banks. And those two banks pass the deals to a handful of advisory firms - his firm is one of them.
If you're raising in a market like this, cold-pitching the end investor probably isn't the route. The capital sits at the end of a chain of relationships, and the deal gets seen by whoever sits in the middle of it. Work out who that is before you send a single deck.
Would you invest in Vietnam right now?
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Real Estate:
Hong Kong - Land Purchase & Rezone - $70M Debt/Equity
Netherlands - Office Portfolio Conversion - $150M Debt/Equity
Dubai - Luxury Villa Flip - $16M Debt/Equity
UK - Brownfield Data Centre - £65M Debt
USA - New York Multifamily - $2M Equity
Canada - GPU Financing - $89M Debt
Australia - Debt Purchase / Refinance - $350M
Secondaries:
Direct GP access to Crusoe, Moonshot, Databricks, OpenAI and Bytedance.
This isn't the full pipeline - just a flavour of what's active. If you're an investor or lender active in any of these asset classes or geographies, reply to this email.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday.
— Jordon
P.S. I get 500,000+ monthly impressions on LinkedIn and a growing list of private capital readers right here. If you'd like to get your company, fund, or raise in front of this audience, just reply to this email.