PowerBridge hires Aligned Data Centers veteran to lead hyperscale sales
PowerBridge has appointed Melissa Podesto as Vice President of Hyperscale Leasing and Data Center Sales, tasking her with building commercial relationships ahead of first power delivery at the company's flagship Alpha Digital Campus in Pecos, West Texas. The hire signals an escalation in the Texas-based developer's push to lock in hyperscaler and AI customers before its two-gigawatt site comes online.
Podesto brings more than two decades of enterprise infrastructure sales experience. She joins from Aligned Data Centers, where she held the role of Senior Director of Sales, and before that spent nearly a decade at Digital Realty as Global Sales Director, covering hyperscale and global account business for one of the sector's largest co-location platforms. Her appointment follows FivePoint Infrastructure's $1 billion equity commitment to PowerBridge, which was disclosed in May 2025.
The role and the campus
Podesto will oversee customer engagement strategy as PowerBridge advances its Alpha Digital Campus, which the company says is positioned as an anticipated ERCOT Batch 0 power generation and data centre project. First power delivery is scheduled for the second half of 2027, with a second tranche expected in early 2028. PowerBridge says the site has a capacity of two gigawatts, with a broader multi-gigawatt portfolio of developments across West Texas in various stages of advancement.
Chief executive Alex Hernandez, who previously co-founded Cumulus Data before forming PowerBridge in partnership with FivePoint Infrastructure, framed the appointment around what he describes as an energy convergence strategy. "Melissa's long-standing relationships with hyperscale, cloud and AI customers will accelerate our mission to deliver large-scale powered campuses built for speed, certainty and growth," he said.
Market context
The appointment reflects wider dynamics in the hyperscale leasing market, where developers are racing to secure anchor tenants before capacity comes online. Demand for large, power-dense sites has outpaced available inventory across established markets such as Northern Virginia, Phoenix and the Dallas metroplex, pushing some buyers to consider emerging West Texas locations where land costs are lower and power infrastructure, built partly around renewable generation, is being developed from the ground up.
ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, has faced scrutiny over its ability to absorb the power draw of large-scale data centre developments, and its Batch 0 interconnection queue carries significance for developers seeking priority access to generation capacity. PowerBridge's claim to that queue position will be a key commercial differentiator in customer negotiations, given ongoing grid-connection uncertainty across multiple US markets.
Competitive positioning
PowerBridge enters a leasing market where established players including Equinix, Digital Realty, Iron Mountain and a growing field of specialist campus developers are all competing for the same cohort of hyperscaler and AI-infrastructure buyers. The company's integrated approach, combining owned land, power generation rights and fibre connectivity, mirrors a model that has attracted institutional capital to rivals such as Compass Datacenters and CyrusOne. FivePoint's backing gives PowerBridge a credible financial position, though the company has not yet disclosed named anchor tenants or signed leasing commitments, which will be the key commercial milestone investors and observers are watching for as the 2027 delivery window approaches.