Ardent Data Centers has broken ground on the upgrade of its Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania data centre site.

The site, which was acquired in January 2024, will be retrofitted into a high-density data centre facility, designed to accommodate next generation of High Performance Computing.

Ardent, which is a Northern Data Group company, has said it will upgrade the 41,000 sqft building with liquid cooling technology. The facility will have an initial capacity of 5 MW, with plans to upgrade to 20 MW in the future.

The upgrade is scheduled for completion in the last quarter of 2024.

Aroosh Thillainathan, Founder and CEO, Northern Data Group, said, “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, added, “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”.