Data Center Investment News — 09/10/2026
October 9, 2026
Written by Angela Cáceres, Siddhi Pandit, Ensar Aljimi
Continent 8 Technologies launches data center in Johannesburg, South Africa
Continent 8 Technologies, a managed hosting and cloud provider specializing in iGaming and online sports betting, has opened a data center in Johannesburg, marking its first move into Africa. The facility connects directly to the company’s private global network of more than 100 locations, giving operators lower-latency access to South African players.
CEO Mike Small described South Africa as one of the world’s most significant regulated betting markets and a natural next step for the company’s growth. The exact site and any colocation partner have not been disclosed, and the launch comes alongside a new 500kW facility at the Tioga Downs Casino Resort in New York, reflecting Continent 8’s strategy of following regulatory requirements in the markets it serves.
atNorth to build 75MW data center in Salo, Finland
Nordic operator atNorth plans to invest €2 billion ($2.24bn) in a new campus, FIN05, on a 28.6-hectare site in Salo, southwest Finland. Power has been secured for an initial 75MW phase due to go live in Q3 2028, with a pathway to as much as 230MW, equivalent to around 160MW of IT capacity.
The company intends to sign long-term PPAs with local energy suppliers and make the campus’s waste heat available for reuse. FIN05 adds to atNorth’s growing Finnish presence, which includes two facilities near Helsinki and the FIN04 project in Kouvola, and follows Equinix and CPP’s acquisition of the business earlier this year.
ByteDance takes up one-fifth of China’s data center capacity
TikTok owner ByteDance accounts for roughly one-fifth of China’s data center capacity, according to SemiAnalysis research covering 1,000 facilities and 60 providers. The country’s market currently exceeds 24GW, with a further 20GW in the pipeline and 30GW of additional announced projects, and almost all of ByteDance’s share is leased from third parties.
That footprint places ByteDance ahead of Alibaba Cloud, Tencent, Baidu and Huawei, which rely more heavily on self-built capacity. The company continues to expand, with a reported 500MW agreement with Vnet, a $614m AI facility in Shanxi province and talks over as much as 6GW in Inner Mongolia, while also leasing capacity in Malaysia, Singapore, Norway and Finland.
Applied Digital to develop 1GW data center campus in Finland
Applied Digital is making its first move outside the US, securing an agreement that provides access to up to 1GW of potential power capacity in Finland. Initial power is expected to become available from 2028, and the company has begun marketing the site to hyperscale customers, though few further project details have been shared.
CEO Wes Cummins said Finland offers many of the same advantages that underpinned the company’s success in North Dakota, including a cool climate, a strong energy ecosystem and good connectivity. The Nasdaq-listed firm, which has pivoted from crypto to AI infrastructure, now has five contracted AI Factory campuses totaling 1.4GW of critical IT load across North Dakota, Louisiana and Alabama.
AWS plans 36-building data center campus in Indiana County, Pennsylvania
Amazon Web Services has filed preliminary plans for a 36-building data center campus across 1,100 acres at the Homer City Energy Campus, around 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. Each two-storey building will offer roughly 225,000 sq ft, with construction set to proceed in four phases from December 2026 and full completion targeted for June 2036.
The campus will be powered by a 4.5GW natural gas plant under construction on the site of the former Homer City coal station, once Pennsylvania’s largest, with more than 1GW of output returned to the grid. The project is expected to create 1,500 to 2,000 jobs and forms part of Amazon’s pledged $20 billion investment in Pennsylvania data centers.
Google signs 3.6GW deal with Constellation to secure power in PJM service area
Google has agreed a 3.6GW energy package with Constellation, anchored by a 20-year PPA for 890MW of nuclear power that will enable $4.3 billion in uprates across 11 reactors in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A separate 15-year agreement covers a further 2.7GW drawn from Constellation’s nuclear and gas fleet across the PJM market, without being tied to specific plants.
The deal comes as PJM, which spans 13 states including Virginia and Pennsylvania, forecasts up to 30GW of peak load growth by 2030, driven largely by AI data centers. It adds to Google’s growing nuclear portfolio, including the planned restart of Iowa’s Duane Arnold plant, and follows Constellation’s recent Calvert Cliffs agreement with Amazon.
AirTrunk plans additional $1bn investment in data center campus in Inzai, Japan
AirTrunk will invest a further $1 billion in its TOK1 campus in Inzai, near Tokyo, to expand capacity and add liquid cooling for high-density AI workloads. The work is funded by a $1 billion green loan led by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, MUFG Bank and United Overseas Bank, and CEO Robin Khuda expects TOK1 to be among the first Japanese sites able to host large-scale AI deployments.
The investment lifts AirTrunk’s total commitment in Japan to $9 billion, with plans to reach $27 to $30 billion over the next five years and grow capacity from 530MW to more than 1GW. Khuda pointed to geopolitics as a driver, with more customers viewing Japan as their North Asian hub, and the Blackstone and CPP-owned company also recently entered India through its acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra.
Firmus tops out data center building in Tasmania
Australian neocloud Firmus has topped out the first of two 42MW data halls at its Launceston project in Tasmania and installed the primary cooling pipework. In Indonesia, its construction partner has handed over the first data hall at the Batam site, allowing teams to begin installing HyperCube systems ahead of compute delivery.
Launceston is one of three Tasmanian campuses under Firmus’ Project Southgate initiative, alongside a 288MW site at Bell Bay and a 52MW facility at a former paper mill in Wesley Vale. The Batam facility, developed with DayOne and leased in part by Meta, is expected to house 170,000 GPUs, and both Firmus and DayOne are currently pursuing IPOs.
Sesterce to invest $10bn in 600MW AI data center campus in Jämsä, Finland
French AI infrastructure firm Sesterce plans to invest $10 billion in an AI data center campus on the site of the former Kaipola paper mill in Jämsä, Finland. Work is due to begin this year, with 200MW planned for the first phase and expansion to 600MW in phase two, and the company says it has already secured an anchor customer.
Sesterce has committed to enabling one megawatt of new renewable generation on the Finnish grid for every megawatt the campus consumes within a decade of operation, and will use closed-loop liquid cooling supplemented by rainwater and recycled water. It will also create a $10 million community fund, as part of a longer-term ambition to build more than 1GW of capacity in Finland.
KT Cloud plans 50MW data center project in Incheon, South Korea
KT Cloud will design, build and operate a 50MW data center in the Cheongna district of Incheon, in greater Seoul, with construction starting in Q4 2026 and completion targeted for Q1 2030. Hyundai Engineering will act as joint contractor on the 13-storey facility, which will include a dedicated AI zone with direct-to-chip liquid cooling separated from a conventional cloud zone.
The project will be linked to KT Cloud’s other facilities in the region to support customer expansion and network continuity. It forms part of a sharply raised growth target, with the company now aiming for 1GW of data center capacity by 2031, up from a previous goal of 320MW by 2030.
