After months of campaigning, the day finally came and the world found out who would replace Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. A Donald Trump victory over Democrat candidate Kamala Harris is likely to usher in a new tenure of policy for the US that is certain to impact its growing digital infrastructure segment. We covered the news from a range of angles this week, but there are plenty of other stories across data centres, Artificial intelligence and connectivity infrastructure to sink your teeth into! 

The Big Story: Trump wins, what next for Digital Infrastructure 

The impact of Trump’s victory in the election is likley to be far reaching across the data centre and digital infrastructure industry. We covered Trump’s approach to the CHIPS act, a crucial Biden policy aimed at stimulating a domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry. 

Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs on imports from global hubs such as Taiwan may struggle to have the same impact as the billions of dollars that Biden unlocked in direct subsidiaries, due to the high startup costs of building domestic chip fabs. 

But completely revoking the act may be harder than it initially seems. Read more here. 

Trump’s views on the energy transition are well documented. The digital infrastructure community is heavily invested in the transition to carbon-free energy to provide the necessary power for the booming sector. 

While Trump’s views on solar and wind projects might lead to a slowdown in their development observers have noted that the machine is in motion when it comes to reducing the US’s reliance on fossil fuels. The production of oil and gas under Trump is likely to increase, but its not doomsday for renewables. 

Furthermore Trump’s comments on Small Modular Reactors (SMR), a nuclear reactor configuration the data centre industry views as a lifeline for its power woes in the mid-to-long term indicate SMR projects are likely to have a bright future. Read more on that here. 

North America

Election week did not slow the torrent of news flowing out of North America’s digital infrastructure industry over the past seven days.

For example, Nuclear powered data centre plans from Amazon and Meta both suffered setbacks. Amazon’s attempts to secure a direct connection to Talen Energy’s Susquenah nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania were made more complex as an amended Interconnection Service Agreement (ISA) was rejected by FERC. Meta’s setback was less public, but reports suggested a rare species of bees meant plans for a nuclear-powered site were put on hold.

In Canada, telcos Rogers and Bell also made headlines this week. Reports surfaced that Rogers is nearing a US$7bn deal to boost its network and cut debt, but the telco will retain operational control over its infrastructure, including its cell towers.

Bell Canada meanwhile announced it was entering the US market, with an acquisition of Ziply Fiber, a Pacific Northwest-focused fibreco.

Sticking with fibre, we looked at Lumen Technologies’ latest results and a partnership it has formed with Goolge Cloud, and concluded that investors are bullish on its AI transformation.

Back in the US, Digital Realty Trust announced a US$1bn exchangeable senior notes offering, Amazon proposed a massive data centre campus in Virginia’s Louisa County and renewable energy firm SolarBank Corporation revealed plans to enter the data centre market.

Duos Edge AI acquired three edge data centres in Texas, and in chips news, AMD reported data centre sales of US$3.5 billion, narrowly edging out Intel’s US$3.3 billion and marking a notable change in the competitive landscape of the semiconductor industry.

Data centre equipment vendors Schneider Electric and Vertiv both shook up their top teams. The Schneider Electric board replaced CEO Peter Herweck with Olivier Blum amid strategic differences.

Meanwhile, Vertiv announced the promotion of Scott Armul to executive vice president, global portfolio and business units and said Stephen Liang, the company’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of products and solutions, will concentrate on defining the vision and strategy for future technology development.

In other appointments news Microsoft welcomed ex-Facebook executive Jay Parikh to its senior leadership team.

As if all of this was not evidence enough of the data centre market boom, global asset manager BlackStone predicted a massive surge in data centre investments, with projections reaching US$2 trillion over the next five years.

Asia Pacific

As The Tech Capital’s APAC Finance Forum in Jakarta draws ever closer, we caught up with one of our most anticipated speakers, Jacqueline Chan, Partner, Milbank to hear her thoughts on the APAC landscape and what she’s keen to discuss at the conference.

Digital Edge unveiled a green finance framework for sustainable data centre projects, and SK Telecom launched an “AI Infrastructure Superhighway” with hyperscale AI data centres powered by renewables.

Shanghai DC-Science Co continued the trend of Chinese data centre firms expanding within APAC, while Seraya Partners’ Empyrion Digital plans to launch a Taipai data centre in 2027.

Keppel entered the Japanese data centre market as part of $7.6bn regional expansion plan, and VNET Group announced board changes as an independent director resigned.

Finally for our APAC coverage, Fujitsu and AMD partnered on sustainable AI and HPC platforms development.

Europe

Following a trip to the French port-city to commemorate Digital Realty’s tenth year there, we dove into Marseille’s transformation into a digital infrastructure hub, and explored the role the global data centre firm has played in that transition. Read more here.

On the subject of subsea cables, Vodafone’s IEX cable system landed in Southern Crete, enhancing Greece as a digital infrastructure hub.

Infrastructure Masons enhanced its advisory council to address global challenges and a report from Cyrus One found that European’s who live near data centres are more likely to be positive towards them.

In what rounds up a quiter week for Europe, Baltic operator Delska announced the topping-out of its new 10 MW data centre in Riga, Latvia.

MENA

While Europe was a bit slower this week, we had more stories than usual coming out of the Middle East.

Starting things off, Equinix revealed it was opening its sixth data centre in the region and its second in Oman, with a new facility in Salalah.

In Saudi Arabia Oxagon, NEOM’s industrial hub and home to a US$8.5 billion green hydrogen project, is in discussions to establish a 1 GW artificial intelligence data centre, chief executive officer Vishal Wanchoo revealed.

Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund also said it would reduce foreign investments and focus on a national AI push, indicating the rising importance of AI sovereignty.

Finally, Batelco and Qareeb Data Centers shook hands on a Bahrain’s data centre that is a first of its kind.