WSS: Crypto shift to cloud and colo continues, while energy constraints accelerate resources grabs
A busy year is drawing to a close and we continue to track the cryptocurrency infrastructure firms that are now operating in the world of data centre colocation. Core Scientific has secured a large book of business with CoreWeave and we took a closer look at its results, which show a company very much in transition.
The accelerating demand from AI workloads comes just at a time when the sector is coming up against significant energy constraints. This has given rise to a push towards nuclear energy. Hyperscalers have purchased nuclear-powered assets, partnered to develop nuclear sites and there is movement in the area of SMR technology. Oklo is a developer of SMR technology that continues to gain traction with data centre operators and revealed more signed agreements in the past week for up to 750MW of power.
The end of the year always sees a rush of M&A activity and there were deals in the MSP and managed infrastructure space. Renovus Capital Partners acquired a stake in Atlanta-based Performive and CDW picked up Mission Cloud, an operator focused on managed AWS services. The strategic buyers of managed public cloud assets have typically been coming from the IT consultancy space, with the likes of Deloitte, Accenture, Cognizant and others buying these assets. CDW comes more from the distribution side of the game and could mark a new wrinkle in the strategic landscape. In other transactions, we saw InfraVia acquire a stake in French telco iliad’s data centre spin-off OpCore.
Wider demand continues to push resource grabs and in the fast-growing region of Southeast Asia there were partnerships and purchases of energy to support infrastructure development. Equinix signed another PPA with Sembcorp Power for 58.8MW of solar power in Singapore, while Bridge Data Centres and utility provider TNB signed an electricity supply agreement for 400MW in Johor, Malaysia. Johor continues to drive the pace of development in Southeast Asia, with NTT DATA also acquiring more land in Johor for significant data centre builds.
With the year coming to a close, we wanted to take a moment to thank all of our clients and partners for their ongoing support. Structure Research has been around since 2012 and we are now moving well into our second decade. We could not have done this without you. In the past year, we moved our annual executive summit from Toronto to Las Vegas and this was the biggest and best version of the event yet, with more to come in 2025. Please save next year’s dates: October 15-16, 2025 at the Wynn Las Vegas as we continue to build infra / STRUCTURE into the industry’s go-to and marquee executive summit. From all of us here at Structure Research, we’d like to wish you and your families a healthy and happy holiday season. We look forward to engaging with you in 2025.
With the year coming to a close, we wanted to take a moment to thank all of our clients and partners for their ongoing support. Structure Research has been around since 2012 and we are now moving well into our second decade. We could not have done this without you. In the past year, we moved our annual executive summit from Toronto to Las Vegas and this was the biggest and best version of the event yet, with more to come in 2025. Please save next year’s dates: October 15-16, 2025 at the Wynn Las Vegas as we continue to build infra / STRUCTURE into the industry’s go-to and marquee executive summit. From all of us here at Structure Research, we’d like to wish you and your families a healthy and happy holiday season. We look forward to engaging with you in 2025.
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