Issue #24

Editor's Note

North America

• Bain interested in buying Edged US

  Bain Capital has reportedly held talks with Koch to acquire Edged US, which is seeking bids that could value the data center business at around $15 billion. For hiring leaders, a potential ownership change would make leadership continuity and retention of development and operations teams relevant across Edged’s multistate US portfolio, although no staffing plans have been announced.

• Akamai signs $11.6bn compute deal with Anthropic

  Anthropic signed a seven-year, $11.6 billion agreement to lease Akamai Cloud capacity for CPU workloads, with related capital expenditure estimated at $5.5 billion. The commitment creates long-term delivery requirements for cloud infrastructure, operations and supply chain teams, making workforce capacity planning important as Akamai scales the service.

• Oracle issues force majeure notice to Blue Owl following series of setbacks at Project Jupiter data center campus – report

  Oracle reportedly sent Blue Owl Capital a force majeure notice seeking to delay payments if its 2.5GW Project Jupiter campus in New Mexico misses its planned 2028 opening following setbacks including a rejected gas pipeline extension, although Oracle says the project remains on schedule. For hiring leaders in New Mexico’s data center market, the setbacks highlight the importance of power procurement, permitting and project risk expertise, with staffing plans needing to account for uncertainty around infrastructure delivery.

EMEA

• Alibaba Cloud plans new cloud regions in Turkey, Finland, the Netherlands

  Alibaba Cloud plans to launch cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months and expand its data center footprint in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong. These plans point to additional demand for data center operations, cloud infrastructure and AI deployment skills across those markets, although no hiring targets were announced.

• Global Switch to host large Nvidia Blackwell deployment at Paris data center

  Global Switch has been selected to host a large, mostly liquid-cooled Nvidia Blackwell cluster at its Paris data center, with the end user and exact scale undisclosed. The deployment highlights the importance of liquid-cooling, critical-power and high-density connectivity expertise for teams supporting AI infrastructure in France.

• Microsoft to invest $10bn into Gulf states by 2030

  Microsoft announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in cloud and AI infrastructure across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait by 2030, plus $400 million in Middle Eastern connectivity infrastructure. The expansion is likely to increase demand for data center delivery and operations teams, alongside specialists in connectivity, cybersecurity, water management and energy procurement.

APAC

• Meta signs on to use AI capacity at Firmus' Southeast Asia data centers

  Meta has agreed to lease AI compute capacity from Firmus' planned Southeast Asian data centers, extending an existing partnership in Australia. The expansion will require teams with expertise in GPU infrastructure, modular data center deployment and operations across Southeast Asia.

• Amazon to acquire two data centers in Hong Kong

  Amazon has agreed to buy Grand Ming’s iTech Tower 3.1 and 3.2 data centers in Hong Kong for at least HK$2.18 billion, with closing expected in February 2027. Ongoing fit-out and construction work makes project delivery and facilities operations skills relevant to workforce planning in the local market, although no hiring plans have been announced.

• BDx breaks ground on AI Campus 2 in Jatiluhur, Indonesia

  BDx has begun construction of its 640MW AI Campus 2 in Jatiluhur, West Java, with the first 120MW building expected to enter service in early 2027. The phased development and direct-to-chip liquid cooling point to demand for construction, commissioning, power and cooling specialists, alongside operations teams experienced in mission-critical facilities in Indonesia.