Cloverleaf Infrastructure Co-Founder and CCO Brian Janous

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Sep 25, 2025

Brian Janous, Co-founder and CCO of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, shares insights on the 'watt bit spread'—the gap between electricity costs and computing value. He discusses how Cloverleaf develops 'powered land' to meet the growing demands of data centers by aligning land, utilities, and community support. Janous highlights the importance of stable power agreements and his experiences at Microsoft that shaped his vision. He also critiques recent energy policies and emphasizes the need for renewable resources as economic drivers in local communities.

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INSIGHT

Watt‑Bit Spread Explains The Gap

The "watt-bit spread" is the persistent gap between cheap electricity and highly valuable computing output.
This gap creates business opportunities for firms that can reliably deliver power to data centers.

INSIGHT

Powered‑Land As A Product

Cloverleaf positions itself as a powered‑land developer that merges land, utility agreements, capital, and community support.
They sell certainty of power timeline by converting land value into megawatts.

ANECDOTE

ChatGPT Sparked The Idea

ChatGPT's rapid improvements revealed to Brian that AI growth is primarily a power problem, not a chips problem.
That realization helped seed the idea for Cloverleaf with cofounder Dave Barry.

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As we’ve covered in other recent episodes, the growth of data centers and the massive amount of power they require is reshaping the energy landscape. Today, I want to zero in on a specific challenge at the heart of it all: the watt bit spread, a phrase coined by this month’s guest.

The Watt Bit Spread is the gap between the cost of electricity and the value of computing—computing meaning, the processing power behind AI, cloud services, and digital infrastructure. Bridging that gap is one of the keys to unlocking both data center growth and new power generation.

Despite countless developers' promises of abundant “powered land,” very few can deliver what data centers and other energy-intensive industries actually need. It’s not just certainty of power timelines but also land, utility agreements, capital, and community support — all critical to reducing the constraints that make the watt bit spread so persistent. Too often, there’s a disconnect between real estate and utilities. Some companies know how to acquire land. Others know how to work with utilities. But rarely both. And even when those pieces come together, projects can still be stalled without community support, labor, or equipment.

That’s where Brian Janous, Co-Founder and CCO of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, comes in—working to bridge the watt bit spread by aligning land, power, and communities to meet the surging demand for computing. Put simply, Cloverleaf buys land in dollars per acre and sells it in dollars per megawatt.

Sponsors

Watt It Takes is brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking who is proud to bank some of the most exciting companies pioneering the technologies of tomorrow.

With specialist financing support, deep understanding of the challenges, and a global network across more than 50 markets, they help clients scale breakthrough innovations and take them to the world. Infinium are a leader in ultra-low carbon synthetic eFuels and offer comprehensive energy system solutions to support the rapidly evolving energy industry. HSBC Innovation Banking have supported Infinium with project financing to scale their latest commercial-scale project, which on completion will be the largest eFuels project in the world.

So, if you’re looking for early-stage funding, or well on your way to FOAK, click the link in the call notes to learn how HSBC Innovation Banking can help on the next stage of your journey.

HSBC Innovation Banking is a business division with services provided in the United States by HSBC Bank USA, N.A.

https://www.business.us.hsbc.com/en/innovation-banking-powerhouse-innovation

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