Data Center Investment News — 7/07/2023
Equinix opens latest data centre under $8bn GIC JV
US data centre REIT Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) has brought online its second Tokyo-based xScale data centre.
The facility, dubbed TY13x, has been developed under the joint venture the group entered into with GIC which seeks to invest as much as US$8 billion in the development of 36 large-scale facilities amounting to more than 720 MW.
Located in the Inzai region and in adjacent to TY12x, TY13x provides 8MW in the first phase and will provide a total capacity of 36MW at full built.
Equinix, whose market cap stands at US$73.3 billion, currently operates 11 Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres in the Japanese capital.
Kuniko Ogawa, Managing Director, Japan, Equinix, said: “I am very excited for both our hyperscale customers and businesses which rely on them to compete and grow in this digital-first economy. The opening of TY13x will meet the unique technical and operational requirements of hyperscalers as they support businesses in the world’s third-largest economy in transforming to meet the opportunities of an interconnected, digital-first economy. The expanded cloud connectivity on Platform Equinix will also allow businesses to connect quickly and securely to any cloud service provider of their choice.”
Fortaleza to add 20MW hyperscale data centre as subsea cable lands ashore
Brazilian hyperscale data centre operator V.tal said on Monday it had bought land in Fortaleza to build a new facility in the state capital of Ceará.
The facility will add more than 20 MW of capacity to the neutral grid company’s data processing infrastructure.
The new campus, to be called “Mega Lobster”, will be integrated with the submarine cable arrival station and the “Big Lobster”, V.tal’s edge data centre located in the Praia do Futuro neighbourhood.
According to the company, the new structure should meet the growing demand from local and global operators and OTTs that are expanding in the Northeast region of the country.
“The new data centre will benefit from V.tal’s high capillarity terrestrial fibre infrastructure to connect in a diversified way to a neutral ecosystem, offering operators and OTTs complete solutions to access Ceará’s Central PIX (Internet Exchange Point), which registers the second highest volume of internet traffic in Brazil,” the company said in a statement.
Swedish multinational to build $67m Arizona data centre
Stockholm-based multinational construction and development company Skanska AB (STO: SKA-B) has signed a contract amendment with an existing client to build a data centre in Arizona, USA.
The contract is worth US$67 million, about SEK 700M, which will be included in the US order bookings for the second quarter of 2023.
The project for an undisclosed customer consists of a single-story data centre, totaling approximately 23,200 square meters or 249,722 square feet.
Work is underway and is scheduled for completion in October 2024.
One hundred thirty six old Skanska is no stranger to data centre projects having delivered on several occasions.
For example, in 2015-17, the group built a three single-story building campus spanning 550,000 square feet on an existing 51-acre site in Phoenix for Aligned Data Centers.
H5 Data Centers invest in Arizona business expansion
US colocation and wholesale data centre provider H5 Data Centers said it will add 30,000 square feet of space to its Phoenix facility in Arizona.
The third phase development at the 180,000 square-foot data centre located at 2600 W. Germann Road in Chandler adds needed infrastructure capacity to the data centre campus, the group said.
The extra space will support 530 cabinets and add in up to 6 MWs of additional power to the 26MW development.
Financial details of the expansion were not disclosed.
Josh Simms, chief executive officer of H5 Data Centers, said: “H5 Data Centers constructs data centre designs for the needs of our rapidly growing enterprise and cloud services customer base.
AWS sets $8bn budget for Ohio data centre expansion
Amazon’s public cloud arm AWS said it plans to invest an estimated US$7.8 billion to expand its data centre operations in Ohio by 2030.
The expansion will not only create direct jobs but also support thousands of additional jobs at local businesses through the construction, operations, and maintenance onsite at AWS facilities.
According to the cloud company, since 2015, AWS has contributed US$6.3 billion to Ohio’s economy, supporting an average of over 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs annually.
The AWS US East (Ohio) Region, launched in October 2016, contributed to Ohio’s local gross domestic product (GDP), adding US$2.2 billion from 2015 through 2022.
Microsoft buys 200 acres in New Albany for data center development
Microsoft has acquired land in New Albany, Ohio, for a potential data center development.
As reported by the Newark Advocate, Microsoft has acquired nearly 200 acres near Beech Road for a data center.
“I’ve heard it from New Albany Company,” Licking County Commissioner Tim Bubb told The Newark Advocate Thursday night. “They confirmed the sale. It was part of a nationwide search for a site, and they settled on that site.”
The Licking County Auditor’s Office confirmed Microsoft paid $56.9 million from New Albany Company affiliate MBJ Holdings.
The property – between Beech Road and the Licking-Franklin county line, and north of Fitzwilliam Lane N.W. – is just south of a 200-acre parcel recently acquired by Amazon.
Digital Realty acquires 9 acres for 20MW data center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Digital Realty has acquired more land in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for data centers.
The company this week announced the acquisition of a 36,000 sqm (8.9-acre) land parcel located on its existing Amsterdam Schiphol campus.
The acquired land parcel reportedly has the capacity to support a 40MW data center and will be interconnected with Digital Realty’s existing Schiphol facilities. Potential timelines for development weren’t shared.
“Data centers sit at the very heart of the global digital economy, providing the foundations for our customer communities to grow and thrive. Our customers continue to count on us, as they have for the past 25 years, to support their current and future growth ambitions. With this land parcel in Schiphol-Rijk, we’re doing just that. We will continue to work closely with the local government to ensure our new future facility meets the high standards that have been laid out,” said Vincent in ’t Veld, managing director at Digital Realty in the Netherlands.
Aligned, Stream, and Nexstar plan data center campuses in Elk Grove area of Chicago
Aligned Data Centers, Stream Data Centers, and Nexstar Media Group are all planning data center center campuses in the Elk Grove area of Chicago, Illinois.
Aligned is reportedly planning to demolish three office buildings along Northwest Point Boulevard that it acquired this year for a five-building campus.
Stream has put in a request for permission to demolish a number of residential properties in order to build a three-building campus around a mile away from its existing facilities in the city.
AirTrunk breaks ground on TOK1 campus expansion in Tokyo, Japan
AirTrunk has broken ground on an expansion of its TOK1 campus in Tokyo, Japan.
“We’ve broken ground on the third phase of AirTrunk TOK1, a 300+MW data center in East Tokyo,” the company said in a short announcement this week. “The 55+MW building is being purpose-built for a new large technology customer.”
A traditional “jichinsai” Shinto groundbreaking ceremony was attended by senior AirTrunker staff and construction partners, to spiritually purify the land, in preparation for safe and smooth construction. Timelines for completion weren’t shared.
Located in Inzai Chiba Prefecture, the 13.25-hectare site is scalable up to 300MW across seven buildings. The campus was originally set to have 56,000 sqm (600,000 sq ft) of technical space across 42 data halls at full build-out. The company’s website now says the campus will span 80,000 sqm (861,110 sq ft) of white space across 102 data halls.
NTT launches hyperscale campus in Chennai, India
The Chennai 2 data center campus is located on a six-acre site in Ambattur and at full build-out will have a total of 34.8MW available from two nine-story buildings. The first building, which is now live, offers 17.4MW of capacity.
Chennai 2 is 9km away from NTT’s Chennai 1 data center which has 2MW of capacity across 1,500 sqm (16,145 sq ft).
In a LinkedIn post, the company said: “The new campus will serve as the digital gateway connecting India to Southeast Asia and beyond, enabling businesses to explore new horizons and opportunities.”
Sharad Sanghi, chairman at NTT Global Data Centers & Cloud Infrastructure India said: “India is an important market for us and home to a significant part of this global capacity. Going forward, our investment roadmap in India includes multiple data center campuses, renewable energy plants, subsea cables, and more. We are dedicated to empowering India’s digital landscape and are excited to embark on this transformative journey.”
Microsoft confirms plans for one data center campus in Sydney, drops plans for another
Microsoft has officially announced plans to develop a new data center campus in Sydney, Australia.
The news comes after it recently dropped plans for a six-story data center in another area of the Australian city, and work begins on a second building at an existing campus.
Microsoft officially announces Kemps Creek campus
Microsoft announced last week that its data center site at Kemps Creek in Western Sydney had hosted a Land Acknowledgement with members of local Indigenous tribes.
Indigenous-owned Indigital brought Microsoft together with members of the local Dharug Nation to shape the site’s exterior artwork and landscape design in a way that “supports cultural connection and inclusion.”
American Tower files to build Edge data center in San Antonio, Texas
American Tower has filed plans to develop a new Edge data center in San Antonio, Texas.
The tower company last month filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to develop what is listed as the ‘American Tower Data Center – Highway 90’.
The company aims to invest $15 million in developing a 7,255 sq ft (674 sqm) “electronic data storage center” on a vacant lot adjacent to an existing cellular communications facility located at 5436 New Highway 90 West.
Construction is set to being in August 2024 for a December 2024 completion date. The company noted day-to-day operations of the new storage center will be separate but related to the cellular communications facility.
Edged Energy breaks ground on 180MW data center in Atlanta, Georgia
Data center provider Edged Energy has broken ground on a new data center project in Atlanta, Georgia.
“We’re excited to announce the groundbreaking of the Edged Atlanta sustainable data center, featuring 180MW of capacity, waterless cooling, and a 1.15 PUE on a 70+ acre campus near Downtown Atlanta,” the company said this week on LinkedIn.
Construction of the data campus commenced on July 1. The expected completion data has not yet been shared.
Plans for the Atlanta facility were first shared in January 2023, when a building permit was filed to develop a 210,000-square-foot (19,500 sqm) two-story data center at Tilford Yard. At the time, BizJournal flagged that the applier was Endeavour, parent company of Edged Energy.
Equinix launches hyperscale data center in Tokyo, Japan
Equinix has launched a new hyperscale data center in Tokyo, Japan.
The company this week announced the opening of TY13x. Located in the Inzai region and adjacent to TY12x, TY13x provides 8MW in the first phase and will provide a total of 36MW at full build-out.
Equinix first partnered with Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund in October 2019 to develop hyperscale facilities under the xScale label. Plans for three Japanese xScale facilities in Tokyo and Osaka were announced in April 2020; TY12x opened in March 2021, and OS2x opened later that year.
The company has also partnered with PGIM for xScale developments.
Plans filed for 98MW data center campus outside Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire
Greystoke Land Ltd has filed with Three Rivers District Council for the demolition of existing buildings on a 33-hectare site north of Mansion House Farm along Bedmond Road in Abbots Langley to build a data center campus.
The company wants to build two data center buildings spanning up to 84,000 sqm (904,170 sq ft) along with ancillary offices, internal plant and equipment, emergency backup generators and associated fuel storage. The site would have an IT load of 96MW.
Other planned works include a 300 sqm “innovation, education, and training center.”
Though close to the M25 motorway, the site is currently greenfield land located wholly within the Metropolitan Green Belt. While industrial developments generally aren’t allowed in the Green Belt, the company is aiming to develop a 21-hectare country park on part of the site.