02/16/2025 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Iowa, hyperscale data centers, AI, QuEra Computing, Renewable Energy
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] City of Cedar Rapids, Alliant Energy, and QTS Collaborate on New Data Center Campus in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After announcing 2 major data center projects a few weeks ago ($576 million Google data center, and a $750 million QTS data center) QTS has announced their Cedar Rapids development. If anyone wants to know about very qualified individuals to work at either of these data centers, just let me know. Also - check back on this Substack for pictures of me stalking the construction sites.
[Link] STACK Infrastructure announced plans for a 144MW data center campus in Loudoun County, Virginia. The hyperscale campus in Ashburn will provide scalable capacity across two 72MW, two-story buildings, and is designed with advanced cooling capabilities.
[Link] Vantage Data Centers and VoltaGrid announced a partnership aimed at delivering rapid, scalable energy solutions in markets where grid power is constrained. The agreement says that VoltaGrid will deploy more than one gigawatt of prime power generation capacity across Vantage’s North America portfolio. The partnership combines portable and stationary microgrid systems, which utilize natural gas to provide a reliable, energy-efficient, and eco-friendly solution for power-critical digital infrastructure.
[Link] Ooredoo and Iron Mountain Partner to accelerate Data Centre growth across Ooredoo’s carrier-neutral data center company, MENA Digital Hub. Iron Mountain will provide MENA with specialized advice in the design, construction, and daily operations of data centers to meet evolving global demands.
[Link] Another crypto-to-AI pivot. Riot Platforms updates it board of directors and announced it has engaged investment bank Evercore to act as financial advisor in relation to its evaluation of AI/HPC uses for the company’s power assets at its Corsicana Facility in Navarro County, Texas.
[Link] Arm is reportedly planning to launch its first-ever complete semiconductor after securing Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc. as one of its first customers.
[Link] More solar and battery storage were added to Texas’ grid than any other power source last year. Texas added nearly 1,500 megawatts of battery storage to the grid’s summer rated capacities in 2023. That figure almost tripled to 4,374 megawatts added in 2024, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
[Link] AI can be part of the problem and the solution: Meeting the growing energy demands of data centers.
[Link] QuEra Computing announced that it has completed a funding round in excess of $230 million, with investment from Google's Quantum AI business unit and SoftBank Vision Fund, among others.
🤯[Link] Quantum-inspired technique stores Terabytes of data in a millimeter crystal. Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed a new memory storage technique using atomic-scale crystal defects to store binary information.
[Link] I watched an interesting video called 15 Massive Data Centers under construction. It was kind of a random list of projects happening around the world recently - but it was still interesting. Here is a summary of the projects that the video highlighted:
Project Stargate: $500 billion joint venture by Open AI, Soft Bank, and Oracle.
Atlas Development data center campus - Atlanta, GA
XAI Colossus supercluster in Memphis, TN
Equinix hyperscale expansion: in October of 2024 Equinix announced a joint venture with Singapore's Sovereign wealth fund.
Italy’s Leonardo supercomputer - European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking
EuroHPC Deucalion supercomputer - Portugal
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre: Alps supercomputer
Jupiter exascale supercomputer in Germany
Tract Data Center Park in Phoenix, Arizona
MGHPCC : Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center
DataBank data centers in Plano Texas
University of Alabama High Performance Computing Center
Sabey Data Centers - SDC Austin campus in Round Rock Texas
Meta - Richland Perish - North Eastern Louisiana
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