T5 Services, a data centre construction and operations firm, has appointed Mason Thornburg as chief financial officer to support its expansion. The company currently serves over 90 third-party facilities globally and generates more than $1.6 billion in annual revenue. Thornburg brings over 20 years of finance and operations leadership experience across construction, infrastructure and real estate sectors. He most recently served as CFO at Vision Hospitality Group, where he led enterprise finance strategy, treasury and operational planning. As CFO, Thornburg will report to president and COO Tom Mertz and oversee accounting, financial reporting, treasury and forecasting across T5's construction and operations businesses. The appointment follows T5's recent strategic realignment into two focused operating entities.

Data centre of the month: T5 Data Centers, T5 @ Charlotte II. Developed by T5 Data Centers, the data centre is one of the company's legacy buildings dating back to 2008. Its legacy status means that the company can take the shell building, originally designed for small colocation deployment, and create an AI-ready environment. In order to deliver additional power to the data centre campus to support AI demand, T5 Data Centers partnered with Duke Power. This is to turn the data centre asset into what Robbie Sovie, executive vice president of development at T5 Data Centers, called "an AI scale solution with liquid-to-chip cooling to support a 1,000w/sf solution". He added: "Duke Power was able to support T5 with ample power for growth. The T5 @ Charlotte Park has been a successful data centre campus with numerous built to suit solutions delivered to Fortune 25 companies." The strategic importance of Charlotte. North Carolina is becoming a more important data centre market. In particular, the city of Charlotte has slowly been emerging as a well-known technology hub for several years, having become a desirable location for technology companies, entrepreneurs and IT professionals. Likewise, renewable energy options and tax incentives have enticed the data centre industry. T5 Data Centers selected Charlotte for its data centre for a broad range of reasons, having strongly established a presence in the region. "Most notably, hyperscale customers [have been] building data centres within a 50-mile radius of T5's Kings Mountain campus," Sovie explained. Having been in Charlotte for nearly twenty years, T5 Data Centers is has built significant partnerships to support local communities close to T5 @ Charlotte II. "Our community support includes providing backpacks and school supplies for elementary school kids," Sovie said. "During the holidays, we also get involved with the KMPD Christmas bike drive, donating bicycles annually. We have also provided school gym equipment and iPads to the high school students." Transforming legacy into opportunity. All of T5 Data Centers' data centre projects are purpose-built facilities that feature robust design, redundant and reliable power and telecommunications, in addition to 24-hour staff to support mission-critical computing applications. * Power densities support up to 50kW per rack * Configured with N+1 redundancy * Dual 100kV transmission lines * On-site Duke Energy 180MVA multi-transformer substation * Concrete-encased duct bank throughout the park * Low $0.048/kWh power cost * Air and liquid cooling systems for optimal performance As AI demand continues to surge, the need for scalable and efficient infrastructure is only continuing to grow. Liquid cooling therefore is continually touted as a more sustainable solution for the data centre industry to confront the power and cooling challenges of AI, enabling companies to support more powerful AI hardware while maintaining energy efficiency. At T5 at Charlotte II, the company's design includes high efficiency closed loop chillers that require zero water usage to cool high-density loads. "The cooling design includes liquid-to-chip cooling solutions to support high-density loads of 1,000w/sf+," Sovie said. "Our annualised power usage effectiveness (PUE) is in the low 1.2 range." Notably, the campus' unique offering is its ability to design for the AI boom within a legacy data centre. "Our ability to design for the AI revolution has been proven with our T5 @ Charlotte campus," he said. "We've been able to take lessons learned from this deployment and apply them to our 1GW+ solution for the AI world to come."

Serverfarm eyes $589M loan. Three recently upgraded data centers will back the notes. Serverfarm is seeking to secure a $589 million ABS financing package backed by three of its data centers, according to an S&P Global presale report. The agreement is expected to close on November 20. The deal includes a $543 million senior note and a $46 million loan, both with an anticipated repayment date of five years and a 30-year maturity date. The company's data centers are in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. The owner will use the funds to repay part of existing debt. The facilities have a total capacity of 50 megawatts - fully leased, with in-place rents at market rate - while their combined value was appraised at $808 million, the same report shows. All three data centers were renovated within the past three years. LAX1 is a 117,500-square-foot property in El Segundo, Calif., with 17.3 megawatts of capacity. It features N+1 hybrid air handlers cooling systems and is connected to Tier 1 and dark fiber providers. Serverfarm acquired it for $71 million from T5 Data Centers back in 2021, which marked its entry in the Los Angeles market. CH1 is an eight-story, 443,000-square-foot data center in Chicago. It has 32 megawatts of power, water-cooled chiller plant systems and utility power provided through 12 feeds originating from four separate substations. The Atlanta data center, or ATL1, is in Suwanee, Ga. Totaling 153,000 square feet and 12 megawatts of capacity, the property includes air handlers with pumped refrigerant economization cooling systems. It provides connections to more than 7,000 miles of fiber in the Atlanta metro area, as well as Dallas, Miami and Washington, D.C. In May 2023, Manulife Investment Management, on behalf of its Manulife Infrastructure Fund II and affiliates, entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire the majority interest in Serverfarm. The strategic transaction was designed to push the data center owner and operator's global expansion. In September of the same year, the transaction was completed. Last year, Serverfarm acquired two campuses in Houston, marking its entry into the Texas market. The purchase was funded through equity commitments provided by Manulife, along with minority shareholders. This enabled the company to expand its colocation capabilities by 500 megawatts. Data centers, an investor powerhouse. AI data center REITs saw a significant increase in performance last year that is still going strong today. After the Stargate Initiative, unveiled by the White House at the start of this year, investor activity ramped up even more, as multiple already active players increased their capital commitments. One recent example is the $40 billion deal involving Aligned Data Centers, which is currently owned by Macquarie Asset Management. The Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership, a consortium of investors including Microsoft and NVIDIA, among others, is seeking to purchase all equity in the data center operator by the first half of next year. In September, Blackstone-owned QTS Realty Trust was looking to close a $599.8 million ABS financing package backed by its Phoenix data center project. The facility is part of QTS' multi-building campus currently under construction, set to comprise 210 megawatts of capacity.