source: Verne Global
Verne Global, the Iceland-based data center services provider utilizing that island country’s zero-carbon geothermal energy resources for high intensity computing, announced yesterday it has been acquired by UK-based Digital 9 Infrastructure plc (D9), a new investment trust investing in digital infrastructure assets, in a deal valued at approximately £231 million in cash.
Verne Global’s 40 acre data center campus in Keflavik has been designed for organizations running high intensity compute workloads, including AI, machine learning, high performance computing (HPC) and supercomputing. “Iceland’s stable energy grid ensures Verne Global can provide these customers with long-term price visibility, while the local climate supports free cooling 365 days a year,” the companies said in their announcement.
“(Digital 9 Infrastructure platform’s) mission to support and develop highly-resilient digital infrastructures that fuel innovation, but are also sustainable and inclusive, resonates tremendously with Verne Global’s own business objectives,” said Dominic Ward, CEO of Verne Global, which was founded in 2007.
D9 is focused on providing resilient digital infrastructures that are integrated with green and cleaner power in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 9, to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.” The acquisition of Verne, with its 100 percent renewable powered data center, reaffirms this strategy and, together with D9’s recent subsea investment in Aqua Comms, accelerates the investment trust’s ambition to decarbonize digital infrastructure by increasing access to data centers in areas where there are abundant supplies of clean energy, according to D9.
“Verne Global’s existing Icelandic based data center assets represent some of the cleanest, lowest carbon footprint data centres, globally,” said Thor Johnsen, Head of Digital Infrastructure at Triple Point, D9’s Investment Manager Commenting on the Verne Global transaction. “This is another key step to support decarbonising the data center industry. For society to meet key decarbonisation goals, we need to look for ways to shift energy consumptive activities to areas of surplus renewable energy. The digital infrastructure industry has an increasing energy footprint, particularly data centres, which need to become more energy efficient and green. However, as an industry we should not expect to just rely on carbon offsets in markets which are already struggling to meet carbon targets, but we need to attract data centre demand to areas where there are robust sources of renewable power.”
