06/29/2025 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Meta, Crusoe, numerous new data center builds, Eastern Interconnection stressed
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] Meta seeks $29 billion from private capital firms to build artificial intelligence data centers in the U.S., the Financial Times reported on Friday. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said in January that the company would spend as much as $65 billion this year to expand its AI infrastructure, seeking to strengthen its position against competitors OpenAI and Google.
[Link] Crusoe and Redwood unveiled North America's largest microgrid powered by large-scale solar and second-life EV batteries. This strategic partnership delivers rapidly deployable, mobile, and scalable AI data centers that operate efficiently off-grid. Crusoe also launched Spark, a turnkey, prefabricated modular AI factory designed to bring powerful, low-latency AI compute to the network’s edge.
[Link] Texas Tech University System (TTU System) announced a collaboration with recently founded energy and technology company Fermi America to develop a large AI and energy campus near Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. The new campus will reportedly include “18 million square feet of data centers and generate up to 11GW of IT capacity from natural gas, solar, wind, and clean nuclear energy.”
[Link] Integrated power solutions provider Takanock has secured a $500 million commitment from ArcLight and DigitalBridge to accelerate innovative solutions for powering data centers in constrained markets.
[Link] EdgeCore announced the purchase of 697 acres of land in the Shannon Hill Regional Business Park in Louisa County, Virginia, and plans to develop a 3.9 million square foot high-density data center campus capable of supporting over 1.1 gigawatts of power.
[Link] ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, a provider of data center solutions, officially launched STT Tokyo 1, its first data centre facility in the country. With a gross floor area of 60,000 square meters, both buildings will support up to 70 megawatts of IT capacity in total, with STT Tokyo 1 providing up to 32 megawatts when it is fully operational.
[Link] Fibernet MercuryDelta, LLC has filed a request to develop a multi-gigawatt data center campus in Utah, signaling a major expansion in the state’s digital infrastructure. This move follows recent industry trends, such as the $2 billion loan secured for a massive AI data center complex in West Jordan, Utah, and reflects the surging demand for large-scale data processing facilities.
[Link] Cielo Digital Infrastructure is looking to develop a $2.1 billion data center campus in South Carolina.
[Link] Developer Apatura sets proposal for £3.9 billion Ravenscraig data center in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. The plan is currently being considered by the UK government for support via its AI Growth Zone initiative.
[Link] CBRE: Global Data Center Trends 2025.
Limited Power Availability as a Growth Constraint: Power shortages continue to be the primary barrier to global data center expansion in key markets, driving opportunities in emerging hubs like Richmond (North America), Santiago (Latin America), and Mumbai (Asia-Pacific).
Demand Outpacing Supply: Robust demand, particularly from cloud providers and AI-related companies, is outstripping new data center supply, leading to a global weighted average vacancy rate drop to 6.6% in Q1 2025.
[Link] Eastern Interconnection stressed: Early summer heatwaves pushed the Eastern Interconnection's power grid to its limits, with PJM, NYISO, ISO-NE, and IESO surpassing last summer's peak demand before July. Record-breaking temperatures and humidity strained systems amid thermal plant retirements, surging data center demand, and limited energy storage.
[Link] IonQ and the University of Washington Simulate Process Linked To The Universe’s Matter-Antimatter Imbalance. ****IonQ announced the first known simulation using a quantum computer of a process called “neutrinoless double-beta decay” with profound implications for understanding the universe’s imbalance between matter and antimatter.
[Link] US Space Force Requests $277M for MILNET, Halts Tranche 3 of Transport Layer. The U.S. Space Force’s fiscal 2026 budget request provides $277 million for the MILNET proliferated Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation and halts funding for the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 3, Transport Layer effort for advanced LEO communications satellites.
The Data Center Richness YouTube channel has a couple of cool new videos:
Verrus is Rethinking the Data Center: Verrus aims to build "grid-interactive" data centers using energy storage and software to work more effectively with utilities.
A Closer Look at Two-Phase Liquid Cooling: Interview ata Data Center World with Rich Bonner, CTO of Accelsius, a specialist in two-phase liquid cooling.
[Link] MARA and TAE Power Solutions have partnered to develop a groundbreaking 10MW load management system for hyperscale data centers and crypto mining, using TAE’s fusion-inspired technology to enhance grid stability and efficiency, with prototypes expected by late summer 2025 and full commercialization in early 2026.
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