Minneapolis St Paul Data Center News

DataBank raises capital for new data centers

DataBank has raised $533 million of capital to build new data centers through debt and equity. This brings the total funds raised by the company this year to $1.6 billion, with $715 million of secured notes issued in February and a $350 million credit facility announced later in March. DataBa...

November 29, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

DataBank

Microsoft to expand its footprint in Canada

Microsoft this week announced that it will be expanding its footprint in Canada with multiple new data centers with an investment of US$500 million to expand its cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Quebec over the next two years. The company notes that this investment will increase its lo...

November 23, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

Sam Altman returns as OpenAI’s CEO, with new board

Sam Altman, who was suddenly fired by the board has “reached an agreement in principle” to return as CEO of OpenAI as nearly all of OpenAI’s employees threatened to leave the company if the board did not reverse its decision. Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear, who was appointed as interim CEO ai...

November 23, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

H5 expands its San Antonio data center

H5 this week announced the phase three expansion of its 100 Taylor Street facility, adding an additional 340 cabinets and up to 1.5MW of additional UPS capacity. This site, located at 100 Taylor Street, was acquired by H5 in 2018 and was previously owned by the Texas ISP Taylor Telecom. It is...

November 21, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

H5 Data Centers

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and colleagues join Microsoft

Microsoft has recruited Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and other OpenAI researchers who left the startup over the weekend to head a new advanced AI research team. The OpenAI board abruptly fired Altman, saying he was "not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its abi...

November 20, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

DataBank plans 192MW data center facility in Virginia

DataBank announced it has acquired 85 acres of land in Culpeper, Virginia, to construct a new data center campus, which will host up to three two-story data centers offering 1.4 million square feet of space. The new facility will use DataBank’s recently announced Universal Data Hall Design (UD...

November 16, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

DataBank

Microsoft announces two in-house designed semiconductors

Microsoft has recently announced it is working on two in-house designed semiconductors. One is an Arm CPU called the Microsoft Azure Cobalt CPU, designed for general workloads, focusing on performance per watt and a dedicated AI accelerator. The other is the Microsoft Azure Maia AI Accelerator...

November 15, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

US Defense Information Systems Agency awards $110 million contract to Lumen

The US Defense Information Systems Agency has awarded Lumen Technologies a $110 million contract to provide mission-critical network services to the US Department of Defense (DoD). This contract has a timeline of five years, from November 30, 2023, through September 30, 2028. This contract is...

November 10, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Lumen Technologies

Microsoft signs agreement to use Oracle Cloud for AI inference

Oracle recently announced a multi-year agreement with Microsoft to support the growth of AI services. Following this agreement, Microsoft will use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) AI infrastructure and Microsoft Azure AI infrastructure to infuse AI models to power Microsoft Bing conversationa...

November 08, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

Cloudflare blames Flexential DC outage for its service disruption

Content Delivery Network (CDN), security, and Edge computing company Cloudflare has blamed its November 2 service disruption on a power failure at a Flexential data center in Hillsboro, Oregon. "On November 2 at 08:50 UTC, Portland General Electric (PGE), the utility company that services PDX-...

November 07, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Flexential

Microsoft to develop new facility in Rome, Georgia

Microsoft has revealed its plans to construct a new data center campus on a 347-acre property on Huffaker Road, east of Fouche Gap Road, outside Rome, Georgia. The Rome Floyd County Development Authority (RFCDA), as well as several local news outlets, announced the $1 billion campus outside th...

November 02, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft unveils Israeli Azure cloud region

Microsoft revealed in an update that it has launched its newest Israeli Azure cloud region. The company noted in a now-deleted update, “We are launching our newest data center region in Israel. The new Israel Central data center region includes Azure availability zones, which offer you additio...

November 01, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

DataBank purchases new parcel in Atlanta, Georgia, for DC campus

US colocation provider DataBank recently purchased 95 acres of land near Lithia Springs within a mile of the 18 acres where it is already building its ATL4 facility in Atlanta, Georgia. The newly acquired parcel can accommodate two multi-story data centers totaling 1 million gross square feet....

November 01, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

DataBank

Amazon to launch sovereign cloud region in Europe

Amazon Web Services has revealed its plans to launch new cloud regions in Europe. The company notes that the first region will be in Germany, suggesting that the company plans to launch more than one. “The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will allow government agencies, regulated industries, and ...

October 26, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Amazon AWS

Amazon announces new European projects

Amazon, which is already the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in Europe, recently invested in more wind and solar farms in the continent. The new projects Amazon announced this week includes 15 rooftop solar installations on Amazon facilities in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, a...

October 25, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Amazon AWS

Distribution failure causes power outage at Microsoft data center

A Microsoft data center experienced a two-hour outage as its electrical distribution system failed when the company attempted to swap from utility power to its backup generators. Microsoft noted in a newly published report that a power issue impacted some customers in a single Availability Zon...

October 24, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft withdraws plans for Czech data center

Tech giant Microsoft has reportedly canceled plans for a data center in Prague in the Czech Republic due to "complex bureaucracy and long wait times for decisions." An E15 source noted, "A certain small hope is still alive, but rather it is wishful thinking of the managers of the domestic bra...

October 24, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft, Shizen Energy sign 20-year solar PPA

Shizen Energy Inc. announced its latest 20-year virtual VPPA with Microsoft to supply renewable energy from a 25MWac solar farm in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture. This agreement between both companies marks Microsoft’s first PPA in Japan. Sizen is also constructing a solar farm, which will rep...

October 20, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft to build data center automation and robotics team

Microsoft recently revealed plans to build a team dedicated to researching data center automation and robotics. The tech giant has also posted a job listing for a hardware automation team manager specializing in robotics.The job listing states, "As the Team Manager - Hardware Robotics, for our...

October 20, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

IRS, Microsoft disagree over alleged tax debt

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) alleges that tech giant Microsoft owes the US government about $28.9 billion in taxes, penalties, and interest. However, Microsoft has denied these charges and intents to "vigorously contest" them. Microsoft revealed in an SEC filing that it received a Notice...

October 19, 2023

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji

Microsoft Azure

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