Ardent breaks ground on upgrade to Pittsburgh data centre

Author: Simon Rowley

Northern Data Group’s colocation provider, Ardent Data Centers, has announced it has broken ground on construction at its Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania data centre site, following its acquisition in January 2024. The site is being retrofitted into a cutting-edge, high-density data centre environment, purpose-built to power the next generation of High Performance Computing.

With the engineering review complete, the upgrade of the 7.5-acre site has begun; retrofitting the 41,000 square foot building with the latest liquid cooling technology to allow for additional power and maximised energy capacity. Pittsburgh is strategically located with access to the entire Eastern Seaboard, with under 10ms latency to major US eastern hubs. The upgrade is due to complete by Q4 2024. The site will have an immediate capacity of 5MW, with plans to upgrade to 20MW in the future.

Pittsburgh is a favourable location to support Ardent Data Center’s expansion, as it has access to an abundance of clean energy from hydroelectric and wind sources. This is aligned to Ardent Data Center’s long-term strategy as it continues to pioneer efficient data centre environments that give data-intensive organisations optimised performance and availability in the most sustainable way.

This site will be the latest advancement of Northern Data Group’s strategy to expand Ardent Data Center’s global footprint and bring high-density, liquid cooled solutions to the market, providing colocation services for compute power across the US and Europe.

Aroosh Thillainathan, Founder and CEO, Northern Data Group, says, “The continued progress that our Ardent team is making supports Northern Data Group in providing the infrastructure required to fully capitalise on the HPC market. Powering the next generation of HPC innovation is central to our strategy, and scaling the Group’s portfolio of data centres through Ardent is core to realising this ambition.

“These upgrades are an important step as we continue to deliver on our vision for Ardent to become the global operational leader of next-generational high-density and high-performance compute data centre solutions.”

Corey Needles, Managing Director, Ardent Data Centers, comments, “The Pittsburgh site represents an important next step in the expansion of our portfolio, and I’m delighted to update on our progress as we upgrade the data centre at pace. Pittsburgh’s location offers multiple benefits for our colocation offering, aligning to our long-term strategy to pioneer efficient data centre environments, purpose built with high-density, liquid cooling solutions”.