5 Notable Data Center Links for May 23, 2026
Blackstone Backs $500M Google TPU Venture, Armada Scales Up for Modular Data Centers
Each week I curate 5 links from the data center sector that I find particularly interesting, with my commentary on why they merit your attention.
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5 Notable Data Center Links
Blackstone to Invest $5 Billion in Google TPU Venture (CNBC) - Private equity giant Blackstone will invest $5 billion in equity capital in a new AI infrastructure platform featuring Google’s TPUs (tensor processing units), custom chips that have been largely used in Google’s cloud and internal use. The new company plans to bring its first 500 megawatts of compute capacity online by 2027, with “plans to scale significantly over time,” Blackstone said in a statement.
“This new company has enormous potential as it helps to meet the unprecedented demand for compute,” Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone, said in the statement. This is a significant move to further expand the options for AI processing at scale, as users look beyond NVIDIA for hardware and capacity to fuel their AI ambitions. This trend has boosted the fortunes of Intel and AMD, as well as the Cerebras IPO.
Armada Raises $230 Million for Modular Data Centers - Modular Infrastructure specialist Armada will build a dedicated factory in Arizona to produce modular data centers, backed by a $230 million Series B funding round from investors led by Blackrock. One of the new investors is Johnson Controls, which also unveiled a Global Framework Agreement with Armada for modular data center systems. Armada has supplied modular infrastructure for the defense and oil sectors, but is now boosting its focus on AI infrastructure. Prefabricated infrastructure is one of the big AI-driven design trends we’ve been following.
Hyperscale Lease Boosts Applied Digital Past 1 Gigawatt in Contracts - This is a pretty big milestone in the crypto-to-AI Power Shift we’ve been tracking. Developer Applied Digital announced a 300 megawatt lease with an existing customer - a “high investment grade” hyperscaler - for its new Polaris Forge 3 data center in North Dakota. The lease is valued at $7.5 billion, with options that could boost it to $18.5 billion. CEO Wes Cummins: “While executing leases representing 1.2 GW in the past eleven months has been a monumental achievement, we are actively marketing more than 1.7 GW of grid-connected utility power across sites recently added to our portfolio, as well as existing sites.” For more on Applied Digital, see our recent profile and podcast with Cummins.
DOE Launches Large Load Grid Integration Testbed - Flexible grid operations are a promising opportunity to improve “speed to power” for data centers. But how can data centers with mission-critical gain confidence in how these strategies will work? This week the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) unveiled the Agora large-load test bed, a first-of-its-kind national capability designed to help data centers become active participants in grid reliability. “We built a 20th-century grid, but today we serve a 21st-century, data‑driven, AI‑enabled economy,” said Katie Jereza, Assistant Secretary of DOE’s Office of Electricity. “Through innovative test beds, we are not just experimenting, we are creating confidence in a powerful new capability - one that delivers affordable, reliable, and secure power that our homes, businesses, and overall economy need.”
LiquidStack Launches GigaModular CDU with 14 MW Capacity - As AI developments scale up, we’ve noted the rollout of larger CDUs. This week LiquidStack announced its GigaModular CDU platform, with multi-MW building blocks that scale up to 14 MW. LiquidStack General Manager Joe Capes said it offers a flexible deployment and distribution architecture enables, with centralized system-level controls.
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