Chelsea Pullen is a Partner in the Firm’s Real Estate Practice and an experienced digital infrastructure and commercial technology lawyer. Based in Washington, D.C., she advises clients on data center and digital infrastructure lease transactions, domestically and internationally. She represents operators and developers, emerging cloud providers, private equity firms, infrastructure funds and real estate investors on virtually all aspects of their leasing needs and across all stages of operations, from early inception to large-scale global platforms.
Chelsea regularly negotiates mission-critical data center leases, colocation agreements, and related infrastructure arrangements globally. Her experience spans the full lifecycle of data center leasing transactions, from initial site selection through execution and expansion, including complex, large-scale capacity agreements, build-to-suit and triple-net leases, powered shell transactions, and wholesale colocation arrangements. She advises both global platform operators and growth-stage developers across a wide range of transaction sizes, from single-site leases to multi-site deployments.
Her practice also includes advising sponsors, developers, and operators on joint venture and platform-level transactions, including the formation of development partnerships, capital deployment structures, and related governance arrangements. In addition, she counsels clients on all ancillary agreements related to data center development and operations, including easements, fiber and connectivity arrangements, shared infrastructure agreements, service level agreements (SLAs), vendor agreements, service orders, and meet-me-room (MMR) arrangements, including those supporting AI and cloud deployments.
Chelsea’s practice also includes negotiating a broad range of technology agreements, including software and AI license and services agreements and other agreements for cloud enterprise platforms and applications. She has experience working with clients to modernize their commercial contracting processes to streamline negotiations, mitigate risk, and improve operational efficiency.
Notable experience prior to joining Simpson Thacher includes advising:
- Global data center developers and operators in connection with several mission critical deployments to hyperscale tenants across the US and EMEA
- Emerging AI Cloud providers as a tenant/customer in connection with negotiations of several leases and colocation agreements for capacity in the United States
- Growth stage developers and operators in connection with preparation of form master services agreements and lease forms, including service level agreements and related form service orders
Chelsea received her J.D. from West Virginia University College of Law, Order of the Coif, in 2016, where she was Executive Research Editor of the
West Virginia Law Review, and her B.A. from George Mason University in 2010. She is admitted to practice in Washington, D.C. and Virginia.