Daily Briefing
Monday, March 23, 2026
75 articles scanned · 10 sections
New Builds & Expansions
— Microsoft is seeking to acquire an additional 57.8 acres at 4100 68th Street in Gaines Township, Michigan, located just north of the 356 acres it already owns in the Grand Rapids area and plans to develop into a data center.
— Bridge Data Centres' QHI01 data center planned for Bangkok, Thailand, broke ground in July 2025, spans approximately 16 hectares, and is expected to offer up to 200MW of capacity at full build-out, representing a total investment of roughly $1.2bn.
— Datagrid New Zealand's planned hyperscale AI campus in Invercargill is set on a 78,000 sqm plot, is designed to reach 280MW by 2028, and is targeting construction from mid-2026 with a PUE below 1.1.
— Hive Digital Technologies has launched its AI cloud platform from a data center in Asunción, Paraguay, already supporting large language model research projects at Columbia University.
Power & Grid News
— NextEra Energy has obtained US Government approval to develop up to 10GW of natural gas power generation capacity across two projects: the 4.3GW Southwest Pennsylvania Natural Gas Generation Facility, estimated at $17 billion, and the 5.2GW Project Anderson in Anderson County, Texas, estimated at $16bn.
— The NextEra approvals are tied to Japan's recent $550 billion commitment to the US market, with the projects to be jointly owned by both Japan and the US under a joint trade agreement structure.
— Datagrid New Zealand signed a 15-year, 140MW Power Purchase Option Agreement with Mercury that will provide approximately 1.2TWh of power annually to underpin the first phase of its planned 280MW campus in Invercargill.
— Australia's government announced a set of datacenter expectations strongly suggesting that datacenter builders create their own electricity generation capacity and pay for energy transmission and infrastructure costs, warning that proposals not aligned with the expectations will not be prioritised by Commonwealth regulatory assessments.
Planning & Permits
— Microsoft's rezoning request for a 40.5-acre parcel in Gaines Township, Michigan, acquired from Republic National Distributing Co. in December 2025, remains pending, with the company's additional land purchase expected to be discussed at the township's planning meeting on April 15.
— Datagrid acquired approval to develop its hyperscale AI campus in Invercargill earlier this month, with the project located on a 78,000 sqm plot on New Zealand's South Island.
Hyperscaler Activity
— Iran's military warned it will target US and Israel-linked energy and IT infrastructure in the Middle East should its power plants be attacked, following drone strikes that hit two AWS data centers in the UAE and damaged a third in Bahrain in early March.
— Bridge Data Centres described itself as 'uniquely positioned to support hyperscaler customers' while revealing it is looking to invest $2.3–4bn in Singapore-based data centers.
Investment & M&A
— Bain Capital-owned Bridge Data Centres is reportedly in talks with lenders for a loan of up to $6 billion, currently likely to have a 12-month tenor, to fund its planned expansion in Thailand.
— Poste Italiane has launched a €10.8bn bid to acquire Telecom Italia in a state-backed consolidation move.
— Elon Musk announced a $25 billion chip fabrication plant called Terafab, to be built in Austin, Texas, by Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, targeting production of up to 1 terawatt of computing power annually.
Policy & Incentives
— Australia's government announced datacenter expectations calling on operators to prioritise Australia's national interest, use water sustainably, invest in local skills and jobs, and strengthen the nation's research and innovation capability.
— Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf stated that US and Israel-linked energy and IT infrastructure 'will be considered legitimate targets and will be irreversibly destroyed' if Iran's power plants are attacked, with Iran also threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz.
AI & HPC Infrastructure
— Hive Digital Technologies' AI cloud platform in Paraguay is built on Tier III data centers equipped for AI and HPC workloads, housing GPU clusters designed for model training and inference, leveraging access to large-scale renewable hydroelectric power.
— Edarat has been awarded a $19.17m contract to design and provide supervision services for the establishment of an AI data center from Al Moammar Information Systems Company (MIS), with MIS previously having been awarded a contract to design and build an AI data center for Humain in December 2025.
— Datagrid New Zealand is positioning its planned 280MW Invercargill campus as a low-carbon AI compute location, leveraging the South Island's fully renewable power mix and cooler climate to attract global AI and cloud workloads.
Cooling & Sustainability
— Datagrid's planned 280MW campus in Invercargill is targeting a power usage effectiveness (PUE) below 1.1, using the South Island's fully renewable power mix and cooler climate.
— Australia's government datacenter expectations call on operators to use water sustainably and responsibly as a condition for prioritisation in Commonwealth regulatory assessments.
Connectivity & Networking
— Datagrid is planning the Tasman Ring Network, a 6,000km subsea cable connecting Auckland, New Plymouth, Greymouth, and Invercargill in New Zealand to Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, offering 540 Tbps and targeting a 2027 go-live.
— One New Zealand completed the shutdown of its 2G and 3G networks on March 23, and will redeploy the 3G radio spectrum to boost its 4G and 5G services, having invested NZ$100 million (US$58m) in those networks over the past 12 months.
— Zayo Europe has been selected to provide connectivity infrastructure for one of the UK's biggest AI and cloud data centre campuses.
Colocation & Leasing
— Saudi Arabia's Edarat has secured an order from Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF) to provide colocation services, with the contract value stated as worth more than five percent of BSF's 2025 total revenue including VAT, and expected to be signed on April 10.
— Edarat offers colocation services from six data centers located in Riyadh and Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and according to its website has worked on or is working on more than 150 data center projects.