The Landlords of the AI Boom Are Up 35% This Year and Their Pricing Power Keeps Climbing

The Global X Data Center & Digital Infrastructure ETF (NASDAQ:DTCR) has become the cleanest way to own the picks-and-shovels of the AI boom, and the numbers show it. DTCR is up 38% year to date and 55% over the past year, as data center landlords ride a wave of pricing power that most REIT categories can only envy. With $2.14 billion in net assets, DTCR now sits at the intersection of two of the market’s tightest supply-demand imbalances: colocation capacity and AI compute.

What DTCR Actually Owns

Roughly half of the fund is in data center REITs and tower operators, with the balance in semiconductors and connectivity. The top four holdings do most of the heavy lifting: Equinix at 12%, Digital Realty at 11%, American Tower at 10%, and Crown Castle at 7%. That is roughly 40% of the portfolio in four names, so what happens at Equinix and Digital Realty effectively is what happens to DTCR. Equinix is up 42% year to date; Digital Realty is up 29%. That is the engine behind the fund’s move.

The Macro Factor That Matters Most: The 10-Year Treasury Yield

With nearly half the fund in REITs, the single macro variable with the highest probability of moving DTCR over the next 12 months is the 10-year Treasury yield. Data center REITs finance long-lived assets with long-dated debt, and their dividend appeal competes directly with risk-free yields. When the 10-year drops, cap rates compress and REIT NAVs re-rate higher. When it spikes, the opposite happens, even if AI demand is booming underneath.

The threshold to watch is concrete: if the 10-year breaks above 5%, expect meaningful multiple compression across DTCR’s REIT sleeve, regardless of leasing momentum. If it drifts toward 3.75%, DTCR’s REIT-heavy tilt gets a second tailwind on top of AI-driven bookings. Check the CME FedWatch tool weekly and read the Fed’s dot plot at each meeting. The 2022 rate shock is the reference case: Digital Realty and Equinix both lost roughly a third of their value that year even as leasing stayed healthy, because the discount rate did the damage.

The Fund-Specific Signal: Equinix Bookings

The fund-specific factor to monitor is Equinix’s annualized gross bookings trend, because it is the cleanest real-time read on pricing power for the whole category. In Q2 2026, Equinix reported $424 million in annualized gross bookings, its second-highest quarter on record, and CEO Adaire Fox-Martin called the guidance raise “the largest single guidance raise in the history of our company.” Adjusted EBITDA margin hit 53%, and management noted that “even in the face of increasing footprint sizes from our customers, our pricing has remained very firm.”

The transmission mechanism to DTCR is direct: firm pricing plus record bookings means higher NOI growth on existing capacity, which drives the REIT multiple, which drives 40% of the fund. Watch Equinix’s quarterly bookings number and MRR growth. If bookings slip below the low $300 millions or MRR growth drops out of double digits, the pricing-power thesis is cracking. If they hold the current pace, DTCR’s REIT names have room to keep re-rating.

The Watchlist in One Sentence

Watch the 10-year Treasury yield for the discount-rate signal, and watch Equinix’s next bookings report, released in late October, for confirmation that pricing power is still compounding rather than plateauing.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.