JANESVILLE — Residents of Beaver Dam already know that Meta is building a new $1 billion data center in their city, which broke ground earlier this month.
The 700,000-square-foot facility is optimized for AI workloads and is expected to be completed in 2027, creating over 1,000 construction jobs at its peak and about 100 permanent operational jobs, according to media reports.
But in Janesville, the ultimate end user of a data center proposed by Viridian Partners is unknown as the city and the company work through a three-month due diligence period.
The city and Viridian recently entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent to continue work toward a possible developers agreement for the former GM/JATCO site that has been vacant since GM left town in 2008.
The path from Veridian to the end user already has multiple partners before the project even gets under way.
According to Veridian’s proposal:
- Veridian Partners redevelops environmentally challenged sites, such as the former GM/JATCO SITE.
- They partner with Appleby Strategy Group, which has extensive international experience in hyperscale data center development, grid planning, interconnection and energy market design.
- They also partner with Langan Engineering, a premier one-stop shop for executing complex environmental and civil engineering projects, uniting environmental remediation, geotechnical, site/civil, traffic, surveying, permitting, and construction-phase services under one accountable team.
Viridian says they will offer “first source” hiring, prioritizing local contractors and workers in Janesville.
The Janesville News Report asked Viridian Partners if they had an end user lined up or even interested, but has not heard back from the developer.
Veridian currently has two other data center projects in the works, however neither is up and running and an end-user has not been announced for either project:
In Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, Viridian is leading the development of a large-scale powered land data center campus with Real Capital Solutions.
The Briarwood Data Center in West Manchester Township Pennsylvania also is being developed by Viridian.
The proposed project in Janesville comes against the backdrop of growing concerns that massive spending on AI and data centers may be creating an investment bubble, raising the specter that a project in Janesville may be abandoned if financing dries up for developers.
Eric Zitek of Veridian, in a presentation before the Janesville City Council, said that it could take at least two years to get through the remediation and power procurement process before construction would even begin on the data center.
“I think the evaluations are pretty exaggerated here and there, and I think there is signs of a bubble on the horizon,” Jarek Kutylowski, CEO of German AI firm DeepL, told CNBC on Tuesday.
Even with concerns over valuations, the technology industry remains bullish on the long term potential of AI.
Lyft CEO David Risher said there are reasons to be optimistic given the potential impact of AI but acknowledged the risks.
“Let’s be clear, we are absolutely in a financial bubble. There is no question, right? Because this is incredible, transformational technology. No one wants to be left behind,” he told CNBC.
Should the city choose to move forward, the next step would be a developers agreement.