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Data Centers

AcquisitionsData CentersDevelopmentIndustrialTexasTop Stories

Soluna Acquires 397 Acres in West Texas for Wind-Powered AI Data Center Campus

by John Nelson

BRISCOE COUNTY, TEXAS — Soluna Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SLNH), a developer of renewable data centers for heavy computing industries such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Bitcoin mining, has closed on the purchase of 397 acres in West Texas’ Briscoe County. The site is located adjacent to Briscoe Wind Farm, a 150-megawatt (MW) wind farm that Soluna purchased in April for $53 million. The land is also situated adjacent to Dorothy 1 and Dorothy 2, Soluna’s modular, co-located data center campus that has capacity totaling 50 MW and 48 MW, respectively. The new land will host Dorothy 3, an AI data center computing campus with a potential capacity of 300 MW. All phases of the Project Dorothy campus, which is named after NASA mathematician Dorothy Vaughan, will be powered by the Briscoe Wind Farm substation. “Customers evaluating AI sites want to know how quickly we can get them to power,” says John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna. “Owning this land takes one more variable out of that answer. Dorothy 3 is a site we control end to end, and that is what turns a development project into something a customer can plan around.” The land acquisition exceeds the 300 acres Soluna originally …

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AcquisitionsData CentersDevelopmentIndustrialNorth CarolinaSoutheast

WhiteFiber Agrees to Buy Two Industrial Facilities in North Carolina, Plans Data Center Conversions

by John Nelson

YADKIN COUNTY, N.C. — WhiteFiber Inc., a data center owner-operator and cloud solutions provider, has agreed to acquire two industrial facilities in Yadkin County, situated near Winston-Salem at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. WhiteFiber is acquiring the properties via its wholly owned subsidiary Enovum Data Centers Corp. with plans to retrofit both properties into data centers. The agreed purchase price was $60 million for both sites. The two facilities, which will be renamed NC-2 and NC-3, sit approximately 55 miles from NC-1, WhiteFiber’s existing data center campus in Madison, N.C. NC-2 and NC-3 are expected to provide a combined minimum of 60 megawatts (MW) of initial gross utility capacity with the potential to support up to 200 MW of combined utility capacity over time. WhiteFiber expects to close the transaction in the fourth quarter and bring the properties on line in third-quarter 2027.

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Data CentersDevelopmentIndustrialLeasing ActivityMidwestOhioTop Stories

OpenAI Signs 20-Year Lease at Nvidia-Backed Data Center Development in Pike County, Ohio

by John Nelson

PIKE COUNTY, OHIO — OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) platform best known for ChatGPT, has signed a 20-year lease agreement to be the customer at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, an AI data center redevelopment of the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, located in southern Ohio’s Appalachian region. The size and cost of the campus has not been released, but The New York Times reports that it will be among the world’s largest data centers and that the build-out could cost as much as $500 billion. SB Energy, a data center and power infrastructure company backed by Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp., will build, own and operate the campus. Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), a hardware manufacturer of semiconductors and networking systems for AI data centers, will provide the full build-out at PORTS-Pike Technology Campus using its DSX AI factory platform — encompassing all aspects typical to an AI-ready data center, including GPUs (graphics processing units), CPUs (central processing units), servers and infrastructure software. Nvidia has secured land, power and shell (LPS) rights at the Pike County project through a partnership with SB Energy. Nvidia will immediately invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy to support the project’s build-out. SB Energy and …

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Data CentersDevelopmentIndustrialKentuckySoutheastTop Stories

Brookfield, Partner Coalition Plan $100B Data Center Campus in Western Kentucky 

by Hayden Spiess

PADUCAH, KY. — Brookfield (NYSE: BN) has announced plans to develop a $100 billion data center campus in western Kentucky with a partnership coalition. The coalition also includes NextEra Energy Inc. (NYSE: NEE), Big Rivers Electric Power Corp., Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative and Paducah Power System.  The project will redevelop portions of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Paducah Site, which was originally built in the 1950s to produce uranium for nuclear weapons. The facility, which closed in 2013, also went on to produce enriched uranium for nuclear reactors.  The AI data center campus will support up to 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of utility capacity and over 1.2 GW of compute capacity at full build-out. The project will be backed by up to 4.6 GW of dedicated generation resources. “This new campus helps secure our nation’s position as a global leader in innovation,” says Chris Wright, U.S. Energy Secretary. “It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of this project.” The DOE first issued a request for offers for redevelopment of the Paducah site in November 2025. Brookfield was selected as the developer and operator for the campus, and NextEra Energy was selected to build and own the energy infrastructure, including up to …

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Data CentersDevelopmentTexasTop Stories

Meta, BlackRock to Develop $14B Data Center Campus in El Paso

by John Nelson

EL PASO, TEXAS — Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META), the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK) have formed a joint venture to develop and operate a data center campus in El Paso. The companies project that total development costs for the 1-gigawatt (GW) campus will be approximately $14 billion. Meta will provide construction management, administrative and property management services for the campus and will be its initial sole occupant upon completion. The new data center campus “will play an essential role in bringing Meta’s AI technologies to life,” according to the companies. “Building the infrastructure for superintelligence is key to making sure the benefits of this technology are distributed to everyone,” says Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta. “Our partnership with Larry [Fink] and the team at BlackRock allows us to move faster and at greater scale — pairing our deep expertise in designing and operating world-class data centers with one of the world’s leading infrastructure investors.” Construction is currently underway in El Paso with approximately 2,300 workers onsite, according to Meta. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company estimates that the project will employ 4,000 construction workers at its peak and 300 staffers once fully …

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Data CentersDevelopmentIndustrialLoansTexas

Lone Star PACE Provides $11.6M C-PACE Loan for Data Center Conversion Project in Irving

by Taylor Williams

IRVING, TEXAS — Lone Star PACE has provided an $11.6 million C-PACE (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) loan for a data center conversion project in Irving. The project centers on the conversion of the vacant, 113,406-square-foot industrial flex building at 6001 Campus Circle Drive W, which was built on 4.7 acres in 1981, into Vesgro Data Center, a colocation facility with a 45,000-square-foot data hall and 3.0 megawatts of power capacity. The borrower is local data center developer Infrascale Systems. Construction is underway and expected to be complete in September.

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Data CentersDevelopmentGeorgiaIndustrialSoutheastTop Stories

OpenAI Plans $20B Data Center Development Near Savannah, Georgia

by Hayden Spiess

EFFINGHAM COUNTY, GA. — OpenAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment company best known for ChatGPT, has announced plans for a new data center campus in Effingham County, approximately 30 miles northwest of Savannah.  Dubbed Project Camellia, the data center campus will cost at least $20 billion to develop in order for OpenAI to receive incentives, according to multiple news outlets. Bloomberg reports that the San Francisco-based company plans to spend as much as $30 billion on the project.  The site is located within Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub (SGIH), a master-planned industrial park by Broe Real Estate Group and OmniTRAX spanning 2,700 acres. SGIH is served by both CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines. OpenAI has entered into a 25-year agreement with utilities provider Georgia Power Co., which will supply 3.2 gigawatts of power to the project. According to the two companies, OpenAI will pay all infrastructure and electric-service costs for the data center campus.  Additionally, OpenAI has pledged to provide $80 million in community benefits over the life of the project, as well as $71 million in Codex credits for eligible Georgia students. (Codex is OpenAI’s agentic coding tool that assists in building software and technical projects.) OpenAI also reports …

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AcquisitionsData CentersIndustrialSoutheastTop StoriesVirginia

Digital Realty Agrees to Buy Blackstone’s Stake in Northern Virginia Data Center Portfolio for $3.5B 

by Matthew Auchincloss

MANASSAS AND STERLING, VA. — Data center firm Digital Realty has agreed to purchase a $3.5 billion equity stake in three data centers located in the Northern Virginia cities of Sterling and Manassas from Blackstone-affiliated funds. The portfolio maintains a gross value of $7.8 billion, reflecting an expected initial stabilized capitalization rate of over 6.5 percent.  The portfolio is comprised of three data centers — two in Manassas, one in Sterling — which each contain 96 megawatts of IT capacity. Digital Realty will purchase Blackstone’s 80 percent interest in the Manassas properties and 50 percent interest in the Sterling facility, including assumed debt and remaining capital expenditures to complete the ongoing development.  Two of the data centers are expected to stabilize in the first half of 2027 while the third is anticipated to stabilize in 2028. The data centers are all fully leased for 15 years to investment-grade hyperscale customers, and rent will escalate annually by 3.6 percent.  The transaction will see Digital Realty pay Blackstone $1.2 billion in cash as well as $2.3 billion in Digital Realty shares for a blended 64 percent equity interest in the properties. Digital Realty was an original partner in the $7 billion joint …

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Conference CoverageData CentersFeaturesIndustrialNorth CarolinaSoutheastSoutheast Feature Archive

InterFace: Industrial Developers Are Fielding More Atypical Requirements from Tenants

by John Nelson

During his keynote address at InterFace I-85 Industrial Corridor, a two-day conference held May 19-20 at the Hilton Uptown Charlotte, Gregg Healy, executive vice president and head of industrial services at Savills, shared a quote from Charles Darwin to end his presentation. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.” Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Industrial owners and developers have had to be adaptable given the haymakers issued by macroeconomic forces the past several years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they rode the reinvigorated demand wave for e-commerce fulfillment with large-scale developments in key transportation corridors. In the following years, they scaled down their pipelines to focus on smaller, more targeted requirements as construction and capital costs rose significantly. And since Liberation Day, when the Trump administration declared a sweeping package of tariffs for foreign trade partners and specific commodities in April 2025, industrial developers have been building and leasing facilities for domestic and global manufacturers that were nearshoring their investments. Today, owners and …

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Data CentersLoansSoutheastVirginia

Newmark Arranges $975M Financing for Data Center Development in Northern Virginia

by John Nelson

GAINESVILLE, VA. — Newmark has arranged $975 million in financing for Project Helios, a newly delivered data center development in Northern Virginia. According to national media reports, the data center project is situated within the Gainesville Data Center campus in Prince William County. Jordan Roeschlaub, Christopher Kramer, Chris Lozinak, John Caraviello, Ryan Bub, Andrew Warin and Phil O’Bannon of Newmark arranged the financing through Blue Owl Capital on behalf of the borrower, a joint venture between Affinius Capital and Corscale Data Centers. Project Helios was fully leased at the time of financing to an unnamed cloud service provider under a long-term lease, according to Newmark.

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