Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
April 14th was (of course) World Quantum Day. Held on April 14 as a reference to 4.14, the rounded first digits of Planck’s constant: 4.1356677×10−15 eV⋅s = 0.000 000 000 000 004 1356677 electron volt second, a product of energy and time that is the fundamental constant governing quantum physics. ⚛️
D-Wave Quantum QBTS 0.00%↑ announced 4th quarter and year-end results, as well as the closing of a $50 million four-year term loan.
Equinix announced a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Montreal. The company says the $50 million investment will help support the growing Financial Services, Gaming, Aerospace Sectors in this key Canadian market.
I’ve heard this northern Virginia area has one or two data centers…. 😃 There are plans, and then there are visions or moonshots for building out digital infrastructure:
Stafford Technology Campus: plans were filed for a 25-building data center campus in Falmouth, Virginia. When completed the campus, just south of data center alley (Ashburn, VA), would house 5.5 million square feet of data center space.
A little bit further south in Virgina, plans were announced to establish a Green Hydrogen Hub, with 1 gigawatt worth of data centers, and energy storage capabilities to balance supply and demand at the fully integrated site. The Surry Green Energy Center (SGEC) is the ambitious plan of Green Energy Partners for 641 acres in Surry county, Virginia. In time the company also hopes to deploy deploying four to six small modular reactors (SMRs) each generating on the order of 250 MWe each.
A busy April for DataBank:
April 5th: The company announced it has secured another $350M in financing to fund the deployment of new and expanded data center capacity at its campuses in Salt Lake City, Denver, Atlanta, and New York.
April 12th: The company announced the completion of its SNA2 site in Irvine, CA. The additional 24,000 sq ft and 4 megawatts of critical power brings the facility’s total build-out to 57,700 square feet and 8 megawatts of critical IT power.
April 13th: The company announced the planned expansion of its SEA2 SeaTAC data center in Tukwila, Washington. With a target completion date of Q4 2023, the expansion will more than double the raised floor space to 27,900 square feet while increasing the available critical IT power to three megawatts.
Kepler Communications announced it has closed on a $92 million funding round, which will help the company build out its on-orbit data network for space-based infrastructure. The funds will help the Canadian company launch optical data relay infrastructure that will use two near-orthogonal planes of relay satellites in sun-synchronous orbits, with satellites in each plane continuously connected using SDA-compatible optical inter-satellite links. This will also help the company develop its multi-pronged strategy for ‘Internet in Space’ and stay in the ranks of the Hottest Companies in Satellite. Kepler will be at the Space Symposium this week in Colorado Springs. 🚀
Scientists create sustainable solar cells for IoT devices with AI-powered energy management. Researchers at Newcastle University have created high-efficiency photovoltaic cells that harness ambient light to power IoT devices. In addition to this ground-breaking research, the team has also introduced a pioneering energy management technique, employing long short-term memory (LSTM) artificial neural networks to predict changing deployment environments and adapt the computational load of IoT sensors accordingly.
Verizon Public Sector announced a 15-year critical infrastructure contract with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worth over $2 billion to design, build, operate and maintain the FAA's next-generation communications platform.
Bonus item: Electricity Maps. Awesome source to look at the world’s electricity data. Their mission is to organize the world's electricity data to drive the transition towards a truly decarbonised electricity system.
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