VIRTUS Data Centres has announced plans to expand into continental Europe with the construction of its first data centre campus outside of the UK. The new data centre, VIRTUS BERLIN1, will be located in Germany’s capital city and is set to be operational in 2026.
Berlin is one of the fastest growing markets in Europe, making it a strategic location for VIRTUS’ ongoing expansion. Built in Marienpark Berlin, the data centre campus will be easily accessible to both Berlin’s city centre, and its international airport. The Marienpark site is an innovation hub and home to a broad community of emerging technologies (including KI-Park Deutschland) which encompasses AI, critical infrastructure and additive manufacturing. The new data centre campus will be embedded into a larger ecosystem, enabling the growth of data and infrastructure savvy businesses around the campus.
With Marienpark’s special focus on entrepreneurs applying computational sciences and research-driven methods to their core business, VIRTUS will partner with the local network to seek novel ways to bring together infrastructure and technical expertise needed to address computational challenges in modern Artificial Intelligence development with high performance computing.
VIRTUS BERLIN1 will consist of four buildings with a total of at least 90 MVA of incoming power. The data centres will be designed to serve hyperscale, government and enterprise customers and will provide a range of hosting and cloud services.
VIRTUS is partnering with Investa, a real estate development company with more than 20 years of international data centre experience as the former e-Shelter development team, to develop VIRTUS BERLIN1. Investa’s local knowledge will help to accelerate VIRTUS’ expansion into the continental European market.
VIRTUS BERLIN1 will be connected to a waste heat distribution system provided by Marienpark, which is a collaboration of Investa and GASAG, further reinforcing VIRTUS’ commitment to sustainability.
“We are excited to bring our expertise and experience to Berlin and to expand our offering to customers in continental Europe. We also believe that our partnership – leveraging the local knowledge of a highly experienced European data centre developer like Investa – coupled with the leading operational expertise of VIRTUS obtained over ten years of operating hyperscale and mission critical data centres in London, will be key to our success in this and other EU markets. We look forward to working with Investa to deliver a scalable world-class data centre campus in Berlin in a safe and sustainable manner,” said Neil Cresswell, CEO of VIRTUS.
