UK-based digital infrastructure provider Virtus Data Centres has announced a €3bn investment in a data campus intended to meet the demands of new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning workloads, the company said in a statement on September 4. 

Located in Wustermark, 12km from Berlin’s city limits, the new data campus will extend over 350,000 square metres of land and phase I of its development is expected to come online in 2026.

“This transformative project sets a new benchmark in mega-scale data centre capacity for cloud and AI in Europe, with an innovative approach to the use of sustainable power, waste heat re-use and technology,” the company said in the statement. 

Virtus has also struck a strategic collaboration with the local grid operator to use renewable energy at a key renewable energy grid supply point. Overall, the campus has secured 300MW to power up its data centres, with adjacent onshore wind farms and other renewable sources accounting for as much as 70%. 

“Access to power, particularly green power, is the main thing we would look for,” Christina Mertens, Virtus vice president for business development, told fDi in March. “Any land plot without access to power is worth nothing for a data centre provider like us. On the other hand, any geography providing access to power will do, even when it doesn’t offer a plot of land right away. We can find the land eventually, but if the power infrastructure is not there, that’s more difficult to get.” 

Launched in 2008, Virtus has quickly scaled up its presence in and around London to become a major provider of colocation services (whereby the data centre infrastructure is rented out to customers). Catering to local clients of all sizes, from hyperscalers to start-ups, it currently runs four data centre campuses in the UK, and made its first foray overseas with a data centre in Berlin announced back in May, which has now been joined by the freshly announced project Wustermark. 

Macquarie Asset Management acquired a 40% stake in the company in August 2022.