Data Center Investment News — 29/12/2023
Involta buys land and data center in Wisconsin for 20MW campus
US colocation player Involta has bought a plot of land with an existing data center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and plans to create a 20MW campus there.
Involta plans to build multiple buildings on the 24.5-acre site, extending the current footprint to up to 20MW, according to the announcement.
Involta gives no details of the location, which is “40 minutes from Green Bay.”
DCD has asked Involta for more information about the location of the campus, the size of the existing data center, and its current occupants.
Wisconsin has been designated a Regional Tech Hub by the Biden administration, and the largest concentration of data centers in the state is in Milwaukee, some 100 miles south of Green Bay.
Rosemount City Council approves Meta data center project
Rosemount City Council has voted unanimously in favor of the Meta data center development in Minnesota.
The data center will be developed on part of the University of Minnesota’s UMore Park.
The land sale went through in September 2023, seeing Meta acquire 280 acres of land for $39.7m. The company confirmed its involvement that same month.
The plan that Rosemount County has approved will see a 750,000 sq ft (69,670 sqm) data center campus be developed with two data halls. The data center buildings will be comprised of formed metal panels and precast architectural concrete support.
In addition to the data halls, a “support building” will be developed for housing equipment and office use, and a guard house developed in the southeast corner of the site. Two communication towers will also be built on site.
Aerial view over Church of Our Lady before Tyn, Old Town and Prague Castle at sunset in Prague, Czech Republic
Cordiant Digital Infrastructure acquires data center company DC Lužice
Cordiant Digital Infrastructure has acquired two businesses in the cloud and data center sector.
Through its Czech portfolio company České Radiokomunikace (CRA), Cordiant has acquired cloud services provider Cloud4com and data center company DC Lužice.
A Tier-III data center, DC Lužice is being acquired for CZK130 million ($5.8m), while Cloud4com is being acquired for an initial CZK 870 million ($39m) and a further amount payable up to a maximum of CZK 485 million ($21.7m).
The transactions are being funded by CRA’s existing cash resources, and are expected to close in early January 2024.
The DC Lužice data center is located in the “digital Danube” triangle centered on Brno-Vienna-Bratislava. The facility has the capacity to house 85 racks, 32 percent of which are currently leased.
AWS launches second cloud region in Canada
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its second Canada cloud region, Canada West, in Calgary.
The region launched on December 20, and will be available for use by developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations in the region.The cloud region will give customers access to AWS technologies including data analytics, security, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI), and consists of three Availability Zones.
AWS is planning to invest $17.9bn in Canada through 2037 in both the Canada West and Canada Central regions.
Seven Dutch firms join EU project for efficient Edge data centers
A consortium of seven Dutch companies and research institutes has won funding for a project looking at efficient Edge data centers.
The Modular Integrated Sustainable Datacenter project (MISD) has been given the green light by the European Union and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, and will receive €70 million ($77.2m) in funding from the Dutch Government.
Consortium members include liquid cooling specialist Asperitas, along with BetterBe, Deerns, Eurofiber, NBIP (National Internet Providers Management Organization), TNO, and the University of Twente.
MISD is part of the European IPCEI (Important Project of Common European Interest – Cloud Infrastructure and Services) program, which will have funding of €1.2 billion ($1.32bn) to develop European cloud infrastructure.