London-based charitable foundation Wellcome Trust has agreed to make an equity investment into Verne Global's project, converting a former NATO command center in Iceland into a data center. The trust will finance construction of the facility's first phase.

The investment makes Wellcome - second largest biomedical research funding foundation in the world - the largest investor in Verne, a Keflavik, Iceland-based wholesale data center developer.

Verne says its data center complex, whose total footprint is about 430,600 square feet, will take advantage of the large amount of free cooling available in Iceland, as well as its renewable energy sources and predictable power rates.

\"Large scale customers face a critical need to reduce substantially the power costs and carbon footprints of data centers,\" Wellcome Trust Investment Division's Dominic Ward said in a statement. \"Verne Global is breaking new ground in using Iceland's natural green resources to mitigate both increasing emissions and rising energy costs.\"

Other investors in the project are venture capital firm General Catalyst and investment firm Novator.

Besides being the second largest biomedical research funding organization, Wellcome is the largest foundation in the UK, with an investment portfolio that totaled $21 billion, as of September 2009.
 

<img style="\&quot;width:" 472px;="" height:="" 304px;\"="" data-cke-saved-src="\" src="%5C%22http://static.datacenterdynamics.com/assets/image/0015/45510/VerneGlobalDCplanIceland.jpg%5C%22">
Future layout of the Verne Global data center complex. (Image courtesy of Verne)