Just as energy investors have moved away from traditional power generation sources to usher in the energy transition, Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) co-CEO Jonathan Winer sees a similar shift occurring across the infrastructure asset class.

“There is an emerging awareness that it’s not just an energy transition that we are going through right now, it is an ‘infrastructure transition’ overall,” Winer, who also co-founded the firm, said on Crossroads: The Infrastructure Podcast. “Mobility technologies are changing dramatically, and the way we are able to move goods and people and provide public transit using technology can be far more efficient, far more sustainable, and far more inclusive by leveraging technology.”

SIP, which spun out from Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, targets investments in what Winer calls the “missing middle” between classic core infrastructure completely free of technology risk and venture capital-type investments.

“Almost growth equity if you will, within infrastructure, where we are scaling up new approaches in infrastructure that provide stronger risk-adjusted returns,” he explained.

The challenge to power ever more data centers amidst the growth of artificial intelligence is a focus for SIP and the company launched data center developer Verrus earlier this year. Winer believes data centers can no longer expect to intermittently draw power in ways that destabilize the grid.

“They have to realize that the data center really has two customers – the tenant and the utility,” Winer said. “The data center needs to be able to say, ‘Hey, we are going to think about the load duration curve of the utility and during the peak hours, where you’re not actually able to currently meet your demand, we will reduce our demand or island ourselves at the data center.’”

To listen to the podcast, click here.