DigitalBridge funds and invests in Liqid, Leading Edge for market growth

CDI serves to improve efficiency at data centers by reallocating resources as needed with software. Liqid says it reduces the hardware sprawl, wasted capital and operational expenditures, and carbon emissions from data centers by lowering power consumption from improved efficiency.

Users can configure, deploy, and scale physical bare-metal servers in seconds, then reallocate valuable resources via software as needs evolve. Liqid’s dynamic software and solutions unlock new levels of resource utilization. By enabling greater resource efficiency, Liqid CDI software also facilitates significant reductions in power and cooling requirements,

“The Liqid team is excited to work with DigitalBridge and Blackwells, leveraging our collective insight to imagine where the market is going and build intelligent, adaptive, more sustainable infrastructure solutions that address today’s most urgent needs for performance and efficiency while preparing organizations for future growth as part of a more efficient IT environment that is built for change,”  says Sumit Puri, CEO and co-founder of Liqid.

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reports that DigitalBridge invested AUD$30 million (approximately US$20.8 million) into LEDC to propel its expansion in regional Australia. Chris Thorpe, CEO and founder of LEDC, told the AFR that the investment is on top of an AUD$5 million (approximately US$3.5 million) investment that DigitalBridge made in 2021.

Thorpe said while no regional data center market is in Australia yet, he expects client demand for the edge in the next 12 or 24 months and that clients are already taking multiple sites. The CEO says that LEDC is on track to build more than 20 regional data centers in the Australian states of New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland over the next three years. Its broader strategy is to build tier III data centers built on Titan 75-rack 375kW modules on 3000 square meter to 4000 square meter sites that will be closer to infrastructure in regional cities with populations of 50,000 or more.

The company plans to bring tier III data centers to states like Victoria to increase internet speeds, widen provider range, and lower costs of connectivity. It will also look to generate cloud connectivity to local businesses and enable edge computing and IoT.

LEDC currently has four major hubs in Newcastle, Tamworth, Dubbo, and Albury that are fully operational and networked, and two facilities in Coffs Harbour and Wagga Wagga that are under construction and expected to be completed by the end of July, Thorpe told the AFR. He adds that the company currently has 18 sites and owns three of them, while the remainder are leased for 40 years, with more locations coming.

Thorpe said preparation work is advanced in Victoria with seven locations, and LEDC feels comfortable running multiple sites in parallel. The company expects 30 percent of its customer base to be regional clients, with the rest being national-level enterprises.

“That’s where we’re really starting to see the moves. It’s the telcos, the internet service providers, the retail service providers – the ones that want to establish their businesses in a regional location,” Thorpe said.

Article Topics

DigitalBridge  |  edge data center composable infrastructure  |  energy management  |  Leading Edge  |  Liqid