Data center firms Chirisa and PowerHouse are partnering with asset manager Blue Owl for a multi-billion-dollar joint venture to build data centers for AI cloud firm CoreWeave.
Funds managed by Blue Owl Capital Inc., Chirisa Technology Parks (CTP), and PowerHouse Data Centers this week signed a joint venture development agreement focused on the development of large-scale AI/HPC data centers for CoreWeave.
The agreement is intended as the first stage of a partnership with capacity to deploy up to $5 billion of capital for turnkey build-to-suit AI/HPC data center developments supporting CoreWeave and other hyperscale and enterprise data center customers.
The initial 120MW of capacity under the JV will be delivered for CoreWeave in 2025 and 2026 at CTP's 350-acre campus near Richmond, Virginia.
Further deployments in the pipeline include brownfield and greenfield campuses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kentucky, and Nevada.
Lee Hayes, president and CEO of CTP, said: “This breakthrough transaction with Blue Owl, CTP, and PowerHouse is the first stage of a large-scale partnership focused on meeting the near-term requirements of our hyperscale customer base. Through innovative structuring, broad financial distribution, and the transactional expertise of our partners at Blue Owl, this partnership unlocks very substantial growth capital for one of the most important players in today's AI hyperscale landscape.”
PowerHouse CEO, Doug Fleit, added: “PowerHouse is proud to partner with Blue Owl and CTP. By bringing our proven real estate leadership and cadre of acquisition, development, and power procurement experts to the JV, this partnership will redefine the landscape of precision hyperscale infrastructure.”
Owned by Chirisa Investments, Chirisa Technology Parks was established in late 2022. The first 28MW building at the company's Richmond campus, known as CTP-01, was recently leased to CoreWeave. The company owns sites across Virginia, Illinois, Washington, and New Jersey – it says it currently offers more than 500,000 square feet (46,450 sqm) of data center capacity, with a pipeline of more than 400MW under development.
A wholly owned division of American Real Estate Partners, PowerHouse has 30 data centers currently in planning or underway, representing more than 2.3GW of power across Virginia, Texas, Nevada, and North Carolina.
PowerHouse and Chirisa announced a partnership earlier this year to jointly expand a number of the latter’s sites.
Blue Own is an asset manager with $192 billion in assets under management. Marc Zahr, Blue Owl's co-president and head of real estate, said it was happy to enter into the new partnership, and added: “Blue Owl is in the process of deploying significant amounts of capital in support of large-scale data center development transactions across the US and Europe.2
Newmark served as an advisor to the JV.
Founded in 2017 and originally focused on crypto and blockchain applications, CoreWeave has invested heavily in its cloud offering, providing access to GPUs for AI applications. The company has raised $12bn in investment and debt in the last two years and has been on a major data center leasing spree.
The company recently said it has completed nine new data center builds since the beginning of 2024, with 11 more in progress. The company expects to end the year with 28 data centers globally, with an additional 10 new data centers planned in 2025.
In the US, CoreWeave has signed leasing deals with the likes of Lincoln Rackhouse, Chirisa, Flexential, TierPoint, Digital Realty, and Core Scientific for data centers across the US, including in Texas, Virginia, Georgia, and Oregon.
The company is expanding in Europe, with EdgeConneX in Spain and EcoDataCenter in Sweden, and is also establishing facilities in Norway and the UK.
