Data Center Investment News — 26/08/2022
Quantum Switch Tamasuk close to completing first data center in Saudi Arabia
Quantum Switch Tamasuk (QST) is nearing completion of its first data center in Saudi Arabia, as details emerge around some of the locations the company aims to develop in.
In February, QST – a Saudi joint venture between UK data center firm Quantum Switch and local infrastructure investor Tamasuk – announced plans to develop 300MW of data center capacity for the Saudi Arabian government. At the time the company didn’t reveal details beyond the fact two facilities were in development and that it plans to launch 60MW a year over the next five years.
However, in a LinkedIn post this week, Tamasuk CEO Matthew Nathan shared a photo of a near complete data center in the King Salman Energy Park (SPARK). He said construction started around September 2021.
“Kudos to the QST project management team, our contractors, the SPARK team and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia (MCIT), who have all been extremely supportive to ensure the successful delivery of this landmark data center in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Google’s Mike Lebow joins Stream Data Centers as SVP of location strategy & development
Google data center location executive Mike Lebow has taken up a similar role at Stream Data Centers, a data center development company.
He has also launched his own consultancy, Headwaters Site Development, which is operated ‘in partnership with Stream.’ He works at both businesses full time.
Lebow spent nearly eight years at Google, first as data center project lead for global infrastructure, before becoming the LATAM regional lead for Google data centers, energy & location strategy.
He helped the company acquire 13 data center campuses across North and South America, totaling thousands of acres and enabling multiple gigawatts of data center capacity. He joined Stream in March, but the move was only made public this week.
CloudHQ breaks ground on $2.5bn Illinois mega data centre campus
Data centre operator CloudHQ, LLC, part of the Fateh Family Office,has broken ground on a US$2.5 billion, 1.5 million square foot hyperscale cloud campus in Illinois.
The development in the Chicagoland market in northern Illinois is poised to create hundreds of permanent new jobs and support growing business technology needs in the region. The first phase of the 50-acre, 250MW data centre project is set for completion in 2024, with an additional two buildings completed in the next 3-5 years based on demand.
Keith Harney, COO of CloudHQ, said: “CloudHQ is excited to be bringing this hyperscale development to the Village of Mount Prospect. The location, scale and speed to market of our ORD Campus reinforces all we strive to achieve, as partners to our customers. The demand we see for this location is already extremely encouraging.
“Working with the Village of Mount Prospect Board of Trustees, the Mayor and the Village Staff has been an excellent experience and we thank them for their cooperation to realize our vision for the site.”
Iberia tops 1.2GW in data centre projects pipeline
The Iberian Peninsula, home to 54 million people, is set to add 1.2GW of new data centre power before the end of this decade.
Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon are driving the vast majority of developments, with the Portuguese capital set to grow the most from just 16MW today to nearly 600MW.
“Spain and Portugal have a strategic position for both distributing and receiving content, thanks to the submarine cables connections and, also, because of the backbones and dark fibre networks, which place them as areas of high attraction for operators and investors,” according to Alberto Díaz managing director for Capital Markets at Colliers (NASDAQ, TSX: CIGI).
“Moreover, these areas have been targeted as a strategic cloud region in Southern Europe by main Hyperscalers such as AWS, Meta and Google.”
Kotak Investment Advisors floating $750m for fund targeting India’s digital infrastructure
Kotak Investment Advisors Limited (KIAL) is expecting to raise up to INR60 billion (US$750 million) through its Kotak Infrastructure Investment Fund.
The firm, part of the Kotak Mahindra Bank, intends to invest in a multi-sector approach, including within the digital infrastructure arena, energy, logistics and transport.
As the closed-end private debt fund based in India explains, the fund’s objective is “to enhance the economic and financial sustainability of the infrastructure sector in India by providing sustainable restructuring debt solutions through private capital mobilized from institutional investors”.
The Fund seeks to invest in operating infrastructure companies primarily by providing senior, secured long-term debt solutions, and may also acquire equity shareholding of the borrower in conjunction with the debt facilities.
Principal Real Estate buys Barcelona data centre
Principal Real Estate, the real estate investment team for Principal Global Investors, has acquired the first asset of the Principal European Data Centre Fund I (the Fund).
The first acquisition of the Fund was of a 6 mega-volt ampere (MVA), 10,502 square metre data centre in Barcelona, Spain, leased to AtlasEdge until August 2033. The asset was acquired for €22.6 million (US$22.44 million). The vendors were represented by Savills.
Paul Lewis, director of European data centres, Principal Real Estate, said: “With the launch of the European Data Centre Fund earlier this year, securing the Fund’s first acquisition is a major milestone. The off-market acquisition of the AtlasEdge data centre in Barcelona provides our Fund with an asset let on a triple net lease to a first-rate and rapidly growing operator in a key city which is experiencing substantial growth of demand for data centre services.”
Principal has recently completed the second capital raise for the Fund, bringing total equity investments to €205 million (US$203.59 million).
CyrusOne brings in Google’s $5bn investment leaded to foster data centre expansion
CyrusOne has hired Michael Nudelman as Senior Vice President of Project Development.
Nudelman has more than 20 years of experience in data centre development, strategy, and management of multidisciplinary teams, including nine years as senior lead for global data centre strategy for Google.
In his new role, he has been tasked with leading global site selection strategy, acquisitions, and expansion of the CyrusOne portfolio of data centre assets with a focus on sustainable operations and reliable power infrastructure.
Before joining CyrusOne, Nudelman spearheaded international teams and data centre projects for Google that enabled the delivery of several gigawatts of data centre capacity and over US$5 billion in investments.
Before Google, he led the development of utility-scale solar projects for Amonix, a solar technology company funded by Kleiner Perkins and Goldman Sachs. He also led system engineering and development of the HP7000 Digital Press at Hewlett Packard.
Dubai’s Damac Group eyeing $1bn data centre investment in Germany
Dubai’s Damac Group is ramping up its investment efforts in data centres with a potential €1 billion (US$1 billion) deployment in Germany further expanding its digital infrastructure play in Europe.
According to billionaire and chairman Hussain Sajwani, the capital could be allocated towards Edgnex, which the group launched in 2021 for its foray into data centres. Damac is currently on a “fact-finding mission in Germany to research the market and possibly identify mutually beneficial partners”.
“It is a very interesting time now in Germany, especially for future-oriented industries and the country has a lot of opportunities in sectors such as data centres,” said Sajwani. “I see a lot of opportunity and potential, especially in eastern Germany that I would like to explore and learn more.”
Sajwani’s Edgnex was created with an initial budget of US$1 billion to establish a footprint of data centres.
DigitalBridge’s Scala brings $140m São Paulo data center online
Scala Data Centers, backed by digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG), has brought online its latest facility in the Brazilian city of São Paulo.
The SP4 site is solely occupied by a single tenant described as a major global cloud provider and will be officially opened in a few weeks, chief executive Marcos Peigo told BNamericas.
According to Scala, the facility is Latin America’s largest vertical data centre at 13,000 sqm across seven floors.
The building has a total power capacity of 18MW at full build, with the first phase delivering on 6MW of IT power capacity. A further 6MW of IT power capacity are scheduled to be made available in September 2022.
Whilst SP4 is brough online in a phased manner throughout 2022, Scala is also currently developing SP5.
PLDT VITRO Data Centers Continues to Expand
PLDT, a Philippine telecommunications, internet and digital service holdings company, is increasing the total rack capacity of its VITRO data centers. Where it disclosed Wednesday, August 24 they had installed 612 racks and had reached a total rack utilization rate of 74%.
“We will continue to add more to ensure we are ahead of the demand not only for local enterprises, but also for hyperscalers,” said Alfredo S. Panlilio, PLDT and Smart President and CEO.
ePLDT is currently operating 10 VITRO Data Centers, and of the 6,133 ready racks, 4,541 are already in use. Three of the ICT arm’s major VITRO data centers, which are located in Makati, Paranaque, and Clark, will have their capacities significantly increased.
“We are currently expanding capacity in three of our existing data center sites and building our 11th Vitro Data Center in Sta. Rosa,” said Viboy Genuino, ePLDT President.
Bridge Data Centres moves into Thailand, acquires data center
Bridge Data Centres has expanded into Thailand with the acquisition of a data center in Bangkok.
First reported by TechWireAsia, the company has acquired a facility from local industrial & logistics real estate firm WHA Logisitcs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The newly-acquired BKK01 facility has approximately 6,500 sqm (70,000 sq ft) floor area, is currently operational at 450kw with the remaining space expected to fit out to support an additional 5MW IT capacity load.
“Bridge Data Centres (BDC) recognized Thailand’s potential through the rise in their adoption of cloud-based services”, said Dz Shing Lim, President of Bridge Data Centres.
“This contributes to the growth of retail and wholesale colocation services in the Thai digital space. BDC has been growing steadily in the Asia Pacific region and Thailand is one of the many markets within Southeast Asia that we are making entry into, as we follow Hyperscale demand and favoring market conditions.”
AWS files to develop 900,000 sq ft data center campus in Bristow, Northern Virginia
AWS is looking to develop a 900,000 sq ft (83,600 sqm) data center campus in Bristow, Northern Virginia.
First reported by Inside NoVa, the company – through its Amazon Data Services unit – has filed to rezone 59.6 acres on Nokesville Road in Bristow, Prince William County.
The company is hoping to rezone the land from A-1, Agricultural, to PBD, Planned Business Development, implemented with the O(H), Office High-Rise zoning district, for the purpose of developing a data center campus. There is also a concurrent special use permit request to allow for data center uses up to 110 feet in height and electric substations outside of the Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District.
The project, known simply as ‘Bristow Campus’ would see two three-story data center buildings constructed – each spanning a total of 450,000 sq ft (41,800 sqm) – along with a substation.
MTS launches modular data center in Novosibirsk, Russia
Russian telco MTS has launched a new data center in Novosibirsk
Tass reports the company has built a modular facility in the Novosibirsk Oblast, in Siberian Russia near Kazakhstan. The site comprises two 125-rack modules with a total capacity of 1.8MW
MTS said it was the company’s first facility in eastern Russia and 13th overall – though previous reports suggest the company already had a facility in the city. The company said the new data center will allow Siberian companies to migrate systems to the company’s MTS Cloud.
The modules were deployed in eight months at a cost of around 2 billion rubles ($33.5m). They are certified Tier III with Uptime.
“The main advantage of a modular data center is scalability: the number of modules, racks and payload increase gradually, as needed,” MTS said. “During the year, MTS plans to double the available capacity of the data center and use it to develop the company’s cloud products.”