Insights

The data center rundown: January

Dark mode

29 January 2024

The data center industry is off to a strong start in 2024, with exciting developments and opportunities happening every day. In this new monthly series, we'll keep you updated on the latest news and trends in the data center world, covering everything from project wins and kick-offs to industry insights.

Top data center news for January

Stack scales

We’re only one month into the year, and Stack is already off to a flying start. On January 10th the digital infrastructure partner announced a new 72MW Leesburg campus in Loudoun County, bringing its Northern Virginia portfolio to a total of 1.2GW built or under development capacity. Brian Cox, Chief Executive Officer of STACK Americas, said the latest announcement “epitomizes STACK’s dedication to responsibly delivering scale.” Situated on 32 acres in Leesburg, the campus will feature a 48MW building set to deliver Q2 2025, and a 24MW building to follow soon after.

Google backs DC growth in the UK

Google revealed a whopping $1 billion UK data center! The new facility is to be located on a 33-acre site at Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire. The “new data center will help meet growing demand for our AI and cloud services and bring crucial compute capacity to businesses across the UK while creating construction and technical jobs for the local community,” said the company’s chief investment officer, Ruth Porat.

Development continues in Iowa

The global giant, Microsoft affirmed its commitment to the data center market, acquiring 111 acres in West Des Moines, Iowa. Business Record reported Microsoft paid Flinn Farms LLC $10.46 million for just over 77 acres, and Marco Properties LLC $4.89 million for nearly 34 acres. The properties are located close to the company’s Osmium campus. Microsoft opened its first data center in West Des Moines in 2012, attracted by the area’s availability of land, skilled workforce, large fiber optic network and the state’s reliable and renewable energy resources — Microsoft is matching 100% of the energy used by its Iowa datacenters with renewable energy.

Plans, plans and more plans!

Just two weeks into January, Round Rock City Council approved zoning for a new Amazon development on a 149-acre site. The site in Austin, Texas, will include space for warehouse and distribution, a data center, and an electrical substation. The company has also filed for planning permission for two data center sites in Mesa, Arizona.

Digital Realty plans to build a data center in downtown LA also moved forward. The project will replace a parking structure and plans consist of a new 13-story building that will house computer servers and a small amount of office space on its upper levels, with parking located on the second and third floors.

Texas continues to be a hotbed for data center development, as colocation provider, TierPoint announced its acquisition of a new, multi-megawatt campus in Fort Worth. The acquired data center, currently has 208,000 total square feet; 45,000 square feet of data center production space; and 5 MW of power available. Production space and power are both scalable, including 8 MW in the near-term and 18 MW long-term.

Hyperscalers to get a boost

EQT announced that the EQT Infrastructure VI fund (“EQT Infrastructure”) will partner with EdgeConneX to build and operate high-powered and purpose-built data centers for hyperscale customers around the world, expanding into new markets. EdgeConneX CEO Randy Brouckman said, “Amid the rapid proliferation of data and compute, data centers are the critical infrastructure housing and connecting the technologies, the companies, and the end-users, thus enabling the future growth of the world’s digital economies. With the support of EQT’s deep local presence in critical markets around the world, EdgeConneX has expanded rapidly, and we’re excited about the opportunities this new partnership with EQT will unlock.”

UK data centers set to shine

According to the Times, the UK governments technology secretary Michell Donelan has revealed plans to boost the nation’s data center infrastructure – now looking more promising than ever following Google’s latest $1 billion announcement. As part of a strategy to make Britain more attractive to scale-up companies, the Government is taking action after complaints from the tech industry that planning restrictions and a lack of adequate power infrastructure are holding back the development of new data centers.

Vantage gets mammoth investment

Last, but by no means least, Vantage Data Centers announced a $6.4 Billion Equity Investment Led by DigitalBridge and Silver Lake. The investment, across North America and EMEA, is incremental to the recently announced €1.5 billion to be invested by AustralianSuper in Vantage EMEA. These investments will accelerate and extend Vantage’s strategic capabilities across North America and EMEA to partner with global hyperscalers in meeting unprecedented cloud and AI demand.

2024 is set to be an unprecedented year for data center development… this is only the start! I’m sure that by the time you read this, there will have been many more updates. Keep an eye out for our next installation of The Data Center Rundown in February.