The UK government has presently announced its comprehensive “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” positioning artificial intelligence as a cornerstone for economic growth and public service transformation over the next decade. The bold initiative, spearheaded by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, aims to make Britain a global leader in AI development and adoption, with significant implications for the data center industry.   Britain’s ambitious AI roadmap taps into the growing synergy between artificial intelligence and data infrastructure. With dedicated AI Growth Zones and a focus on sustainable energy, the UK is setting the stage for an AI-driven economy that aligns with the next generation of data center demands. The data center industry should watch these developments closely, as they signal opportunities for long-term growth in a rapidly evolving market.   AI Infrastructure Prioritization Meets Major Private Sector Investments    The UK government plan introduces “AI Growth Zones,” areas designed to streamline planning approvals for data centers and enhance access to energy infrastructure.  These zones will focus on de-industrialized regions, providing a dual benefit of revitalizing local economies and accelerating the rollout of AI infrastructure. The first such zone will be established in Culham, Oxfordshire, leveraging local expertise in sustainable energy research, including fusion technologies.   Leading tech firms, including Vantage Data Centers, Nscale, and Kyndryl, have committed £14 billion to AI infrastructure development under the plan, creating 13,250 jobs across the UK, according to a press release.  Vantage Data Centers alone plans to invest over £12 billion to establish one of Europe’s largest campuses in Wales and additional facilities nationwide, generating 11,500 jobs.   Plan Harnesses AI for Both Public, Private Sectors  A significant component of the plan is a proposed 20x increase in public compute capacity by 2030, starting with the development of a new supercomputer to support AI innovation. Alongside this supercharging of

Prologis, among the global leaders in industrial real estate, has taken another major step into the data center market with the sale of a newly developed turnkey data center in Illinois. With the deal for the sale announced last December, partnering with Skybox Datacenters, Prologis had initially converted one of its existing warehouses into a 32 megawatt (MW) facility, demonstrating as far back as 2021 the growing appeal of adaptive reuse for digital infrastructure. As reported by Data Center Dynamics’ Dan Swinhoe: “Skybox said the facility was located in the Elk Grove village area of the city. Images shared by Skybox and Prologis suggest it was Chicago 1, the data center the two companies completed in early 2022 […] DCD reached out for more information. Prologis confirmed Chicago 1 has been sold; the powered shell has been completed, with the turnkey development is in process. The facility spans 190,000 sq ft on a ten-acre site.” The converted facility’s buyer, HMC Capital, sees this acquisition as a marquee asset for its newly launched DigiCo Infrastructure REIT, which targets high-quality data center investments across the United States and Australia. The deal highlights the rapid evolution of Prologis’ data center strategy and the increasing convergence of industrial real estate and digital infrastructure. Prologis’ Growing Presence in Data Centers Prologis is no stranger to data center development, having been featured in prior DCF coverage for its strategic moves into the rapidly burgeoning sector. The Illinois project reflects Prologis’ focus on unlocking higher-value uses for its vast portfolio of warehouses.  According to Dan Letter, President of Prologis, “Warehouse conversions in key markets offer a compelling growth opportunity while delivering outsized returns to our investors and meeting customer demand for digital infrastructure.” To support this strategy, Prologis has aggressively scaled its power procurement capabilities, securing 1.6

Issued this week, President Biden’s “Executive Order on Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure” represents a transformative policy moment for the data center industry if implemented, underscoring the convergence of two equally transformative forces: the AI revolution and the clean energy transition. For the data center industry, the policy marks a clear shift toward a strategic, mission-critical role in national security and economic resilience. The Executive Order’s vision also aligns with definitively emerging trends in the contemporary data center industry, particularly the pivot toward sustainability and energy efficiency. The policy’s emphasis on clean energy infrastructure—whether through nuclear, geothermal, or long-duration storage—addresses the industry’s growing focus on renewable power. However, executing this vision will require massive investments in grid modernization and streamlined permitting processes, which have historically been bottlenecks for large-scale infrastructure projects. The directive to align new AI electricity demands with clean energy sources puts a spotlight on the challenges posed by AI’s computational intensity. Hyperscale operators and colocation providers will need to redouble their rethinking of power procurement strategies, with a renewed focus on distributed energy resources and partnerships with utility providers. Additionally, the Executive Order’s call for high labor standards and community engagement reflects growing federal acknowledgment of data centers’ societal footprint. While the industry has made strides in community outreach, such measures ensure data center developments are not just sustainable but also equitable, creating jobs and fostering goodwill in the communities where they operate. For what it explicitly defines as “frontier AI data centers,” the Executive Order also seeks to provide a regulatory framework to streamline development, while ensuring robust cybersecurity and supply chain integrity. Importantly though, balancing the urgency of AI infrastructure development with the complex demands of energy transition and national security will require unprecedented levels of public-private collaboration. The Executive Order apparently isn’t just

MERLIN Properties and Edged Energy to Build Gigawatt-Scale AI Data Center Campuses in Spain To wit, in a furtherance of its groundbreaking partnership in Europe, MERLIN Properties and Edged Energy are collaborating with the regional government of Extremadura, Spain, to establish two state-of-the-art data center campuses. These facilities, designed to support the burgeoning demand for generative AI and advanced computing, promise to set new standards for sustainability and efficiency in the data center industry. A Vision for Sustainability and Growth in Extremadura The data centers, located in Navalmoral de la Mata (Cáceres Province) and Valdecaballeros (Badajoz Province), will each deliver up to 1 GW of IT capacity. Featuring industry-leading innovations, the campuses will boast an average PUE of 1.15, ensuring ultra-efficient operations. Edged says the project represents a significant leap forward in green data center development, aligning with Extremadura’s commitment to leveraging innovation and technology for economic and environmental progress. “Our mission is to create data centers for positive impact, and we are proud to contribute to the Iberian Peninsula’s growing digital economy,” said Jakob Carnemark, CEO of Edged Energy. “The region offers unprecedented fiber connectivity with massive submarine connections worldwide and boasts reliable, abundant, and low-cost renewable energy.” Harnessing Renewable Energy and Cutting-Edge Cooling Technology The Extremadura facilities will operate entirely on electricity from renewable sources, capitalizing on the region’s vast sustainable energy capacity. Extremadura currently produces six times the electricity it consumes, making it an ideal location for gigawatt-scale data centers. The project’s waterless cooling system, ThermalWorks, will enable the facilities to operate without consuming water, a critical innovation for such regions with limited water resources. The system will support ultra-high rack densities of up to 200kW per rack to accommodate the advanced computing demands of AI workloads. Strategic Location and Connectivity The Iberian Peninsula is rapidly becoming

4. Ethernet edges out InfiniBand for high-bandwidth data center connectivity Ethernet recently celebrated its 50th anniversary as the most widely deployed technology for enterprise network connectivity. The final frontier for Ethernet is deep in bowels of the data center, where its high-bandwidth, low-latency characteristics have made InfiniBand the preferred choice for high-performance computing systems. But AI presents a market opportunity too attractive for the Ethernet vendors to pass up. Thus the creation of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, led by Cisco, HPE, Arista and other familiar names, dedicated to supersizing Ethernet for AI workloads. The consortium is now at around 55 member companies and Synopsis, Inc., just announced the industry’s first Ultra Ethernet IP solutions to meet the demand for standards-based, high-bandwidth, low-latency HPC and AI accelerator interconnects.  Industry veteran Zeus Kerravala predicts that 2025 will be the year that Ethernet becomes the protocol of choice for AI-based networking. “There is currently a holy war regarding InfiniBand versus Ethernet for networking for AI with InfiniBand having taken the early lead,” Kerravala says. Ethernet has seen tremendous advancements over the last few years, and its performance is now on par with InfiniBand, he says, citing a recent test conducted by World Wide Technology. “In 2025, Ethernet sales will outpace InfiniBand for AI networking with Cisco and Arista being the big two,” predicts Kerravala.  5. The rise of single-vendor SASE SASE, defined by Gartner as a service offering that includes SD-WAN plus zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), and network firewalling, requires vendors to combine multiple products into a single suite.

The company, which CEO Phil Bullinger currently leads, was founded by Moshe Yanai in 2011. It also has an office in Waltham, Massachusetts. Lenovo eyes high-end enterprise storage market The acquisition is part of Lenovo’s growth strategy to meet the evolving needs of modern data centers that are expected to handle AI and generative AI workloads, the company said, adding that Infinidat’s offering will find synergy with its Infrastructure Solutions Group and jointly will target the high-end enterprise storage market. Currently, Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions business operates in the entry and mid-range enterprise storage market offering a portfolio of options, such as flash and hybrid arrays, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), software-defined storage (SDS), and data management suites such as Lenovo TruScale. “This is a win-win for both companies. Lenovo fills a big void in its storage portfolio, while Infinidat is able to leverage a hardware design and manufacturing machine,” Matt Kimball, principal analyst at Moor Strategy and Insights, wrote on LinkedIn. Lenovo is expected to quickly train its sites on Infinidat’s storage software IP and look to where it can leverage this more broadly, Kimball explained, adding that “if Lenovo’s channels are properly leveraged, we can see real disruption in the enterprise storage market.” Early focus on the enterprise storage market According to analysts, Lenovo has been hyper-focused on the enterprise storage market since it acquired IBM’s x86 server business for about $2.3 billion in 2014. Another landmark deal for the company, targeted at competing more aggressively with Dell and HPE — the dominant players in the enterprise storage market, came in 2018 in the form of a partnership with NetApp, under which it also developed a joint venture in China to co-develop a new range of ThinkSystem Infrastructure that imbibes NetApp’s data management expertise.