Ardent has announced it has broken ground on an upgrade at its Pittsburgh data center site in Pennsylvania.
The Northern Data Group company acquired the 7.5-acre site and existing facility for $7.12 million in January this year.
The company said its data center, located at 615 McMichael Road in McKees Rock, will be refurbished to power high-performance computing.
The 41,000 sq ft (3,810 sqm) building will be upgraded from an initial IT capacity of 5MW to 20MW in the future.
The facility was constructed in 1980 and refurbished in 2008, with this upcoming upgrade due to be completed by the end of this year.
Aroosh Thillainathan, founder and CEO at Northern Data Group, said: “The continued progress that our Ardent team is making supports Northern Data Group in providing the infrastructure required to fully capitalize on the high-performance computing (HPC) market.”
Corey Needles, managing director at Arden Data Centers, added: “Pittsburgh’s location offers multiple benefits for our colocation offering, aligning to our long-term strategy to pioneer efficient data center environments, purpose-built with high-density, liquid cooling solutions.”
The company first announced plans to acquire two US data centers in December 2023 as part of a €110 million ($119m) investment plan.
Ardent was formed last year after HPC infrastructure provider Northern Data Group separated its operations into three different brands: Taiga Cloud, Ardent Data Centers, and Peak Mining.
The company currently operates two sites in Boden, Sweden; and Lefdal, Norway. The company also claims a presence in the US, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany.
Northern Data Group was initially founded as Northern Bitcoin AG in Germany in 2009 and branded itself as a ‘green’ Bitcoin mining company. In 2019, it merged with Whinstone US whose CEO, Aroosh Thillainathan, then became CEO of the joint company.
In 2020, Northern Bitcoin was renamed Northern Data Group and moved its focus to HPC.
Other operators in Pittsburgh include EdgeConneX, Involta, Iron Mountain, DataBank, Lumen, Ascent, and TeraSwitch.
