Founder's Story · Oct 7, 2026 · 21m · 12m saved
With Anita Verma-Lallian, Founder and CEO of Arizona Land Consulting and founder of Camelback Productions
Photo: Alexander Ali, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Anita Verma-Lallian's first data center deal was a $40 million property that she spent about two and a half years getting approved for development, then sold for about $140 million.
Most investors in AI buy the companies building models and apps. Verma-Lallian buys the land underneath them, and she said the supply of sites that can win approval for a data center is shrinking.
"So if you can't get the land, you can't really build AI." — Anita Verma-Lallian
Anita Verma-Lallian, Founder and CEO of Arizona Land Consulting, on Founder's Story, has spent years buying land around Phoenix ahead of development and now looks for sites with power for AI data centers. She also runs a film company, Camelback Productions.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 21 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
The first data center site cost $40M and sold for about $140M after roughly 2.5 years of approvals
She invests in the "third layer", where nobody else is yet and margins have not been competed away
About 40% of data center projects are being shut down, she said, which makes approved land scarcer
Land with existing power is the rarest asset in the AI buildout, and she moved quickly on one such site
A site with ground fissures that she passed on later became undevelopable
Most of the budget for her film Prima Facie was pre-sold to foreign distributors before it was made
The hard part of a big decision is the years of research before it, not the moment it is made
1. Invest Where Nobody Is
Asked how billion-dollar entrepreneurs see opportunities, Verma-Lallian said they look for patterns and position themselves ahead of everyone else. She described three layers of investing.
In the first layer, everyone is already investing and margins are thin
"And at that point, the headlines are there. Everyone's talking about it. So your margins are more compressed." — Anita Verma-Lallian
The second layer has fewer people looking. The third is where she wants to be.
The third layer is uncomfortable and unproven
"And then the third layer is the place where nobody's at. You're kind of the first one there. And that's the layer that I like to be in." — Anita Verma-Lallian
She used SpaceX as an example. People who invested five or 10 years ago are seeing the rewards now, she said, and people who buy after it goes public will not earn the same returns.
"So when you've heard about it publicly, it's pretty much too late." — Anita Verma-Lallian
