AirTrunk has broken ground on a new data center in Osaka, Japan.
The APAC operator this week said it had begun the construction of a 20MW data center, OSK1, following a special jichinsai groundbreaking ceremony.
The company announced plans to expand into Osaka in October 2023. The 16,500 sqm (177,605 sq ft) building will offer 5,400 sqm (58,125 sq ft) of technical space and feature an on-site substation.
The company said the facility will service a new major cloud availability zone, complementing AirTrunk’s existing data centers in east and west Tokyo, TOK1 and TOK2.
The traditional groundbreaking ceremony, performed by a Shinto Priest, included rituals to spiritually purify the site, paving the way for the safe and smooth construction.
AirTrunk was founded in 2016 with plans to develop hyperscale data centers in Australia. The company opened its first facility in Sydney in 2017.
Since then, the company has expanded across the APAC region, operating and developing campuses in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Announced in September 2020, the initial phase of TOK1 in Tokyo was delivered in only 45 weeks and launched in November 2021. Work on an expansion began in June 2023. First announced back in May 2022, the company is also concurrently working on the first two buildings on its TOK2 site.
After reportedly being close to filing for an IPO, the Macquarie-owned company is said to be in talks to be acquired by Blackstone for around AU$12 billion (US$7.9bn).
