05/04/2025
#DigitalInfrastructure news: 1MW Google rack, CoreWeave, TikTok in Finland, quantum computing
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] 1 MW rack! At the 2025 OCP EMEA Summit last week Google discussed the power delivery transformation from 48 volts direct current (VDC) to the new +/-400 VDC, which will enable IT racks to scale from 100 kilowatts up to 1 megawatt. This new standard addresses the soaring power needs of AI hardware, which is projected to exceed 500 kilowatts per rack by 2030 due to increasingly dense and powerful “xPU” configurations (GPUs, TPUs, CPUs). As a part of the Mount Diablo project (collaboration with Meta and Microsoft), Google hopes to standardize the electrical and mechanical interfaces, and the 0.5 specification draft will be available for industry feedback in May. Google also unveiled plans to contribute its fifth-generation liquid cooling system, Project Deschutes, to the Open Compute Project. This advanced cooling unit, already achieving near-perfect uptime since 2020, uses redundant components to keep high-power chips like Google’s latest Ironwood TPUs running smoothly.
[Link] Flexential and CoreWeave have reached an agreement to expand CoreWeave's data center footprint with a 13-megawatt (MW) deployment at a colocation facility in Plano, Texas, owned and operated by Flexential.
[Link] Digital Realty has filed for zoning approval to develop a massive 400MW data center campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, on a 156-acre site along Moores Chapel Road. The project, planned in two phases, would include up to 3 million square feet of telecommunications and data storage facilities with two large two-story buildings.
[Link] Apollo Funds to Acquire Pan-European, highly Interconnected colocation data center business from STACK Infrastructure. The Company comprises seven data center assets in strategic, highly interconnected locations across five key European markets - Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Milan, and Geneva.
[Link] Reuters - TikTok plans to invest 1 billion euros ($1.14 billion) to build its first data centre in Finland as it moves data storage for European users to the continent.
[Link] Microsoft Faces AI Capacity Crunch: Growth Challenge or Strategic Opportunity? Microsoft is at a critical juncture as soaring demand for its AI cloud services strains its infrastructure, presenting both challenges and promising prospects. Capacity Constraints Amid Explosive AI Demand: Microsoft is investing a massive $80 billion in AI-enabled data centers by fiscal 2025, nearly doubling its prior capital plans. Despite these growing pains, the company expects capacity to catch up by mid-2025. Strategic Pivot Toward AI at the Expense of Legacy Products: The company is reallocating resources to prioritize AI growth, even as traditional Azure sales face execution challenges and delays. AI services now generate over $13 billion annually.
[Link] Photonic quantum computing company Xanadu announced it is collaborating with Applied Materials, Inc., a leader in materials engineering, to develop the first 300 mm high-volume-compatible process for building superconducting transition edge sensors (TESs). These TESs are a core component of photon-number-resolving detectors (PNRs), which are key elements that enable the qubit state preparation process in Xanadu’s photonic quantum computers. The company also recently announced a new strategic research and development partnership with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The partnership aims to accelerate the development of silicon photonic integrated circuits for quantum applications, with the goal of delivering transformative technologies for both military and commercial applications.
[Link] IBM and Tata Consultancy Services to Deploy India’s Largest Quantum Computer in Andhra Pradesh’s Quantum Valley Tech Park. The tech park will be anchored by an IBM Quantum System Two installation, with a 156-qubit Heron quantum processor, the largest quantum computer in India.
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