KAO Data, the specialist developer and operator of data centres engineered for AI and advanced computing, has today announced KLON-03 – a new, 17.6MW high performance data centre located at its Harlow campus. 

Powered by 100% renewable energy, and purpose-built to accommodate hybrid-cooling technology – KLON-03 will enable AI users to deploy multi-megawatts (MWs) of direct-to-chip, liquid cooled infrastructure, alongside traditional air-cooled servers within the same Technology Suite. Following accelerated demand for high-density data centre capacity, KLON-03 builds upon Kao Data’s outstanding reputation for developing and operating infrastructure engineered for AI. 

Adhering to next generation design principles, KLON-03 provides the perfect hosting environment for inference and training workloads in close proximity to London’s low-latency internet exchanges. Its rapid deployment also demonstrates continued signs of London’s compute diversifying from the West London cluster, and demand for high-density, AI cloud capacity moving towards the north and east of the capital.

“This year marks ten years’ since our vision for the Harlow campus was first-incepted, and I’m delighted that our concept continues to be vindicated, with Harlow firmly established as the UK’s preeminent destination for HPC, AI cloud and GPU-supported deployments,” said David Bloom, Founder and Chairman, Kao Data. “KLON-03 will set a new bar for our industrial-scale data centre platform, and in line with the Governments AI Opportunities Action Plan, will provide one of the country’s largest footprints of liquid-cooled data centre capacity.” 

KLON-03 will incorporate a raft of measures to underpin next-generation AI workloads. Each Technology Suite will include hybrid-cooled, hot aisle containment (HAC) systems, which can accommodate high-density compute and GPU-accelerated server infrastructure, together with rack densities of up-to 130kW.

Further, KLON-03 will continue to follow the same design and sustainability standards of its predecessors at the Harlow campus, in time, becoming another NVIDIA DGX-Ready data centre and obtaining BREEAM certification. Additionally, all deployments will include Digital Twins functionality to ensure customers’ compute footprints are not only optimal, but that their bespoke infrastructure requirements can be catered for seamlessly, while achieving an SLA-backed PUE.

“The era of AI is firmly with us, and what better way to celebrate UK AI innovation than on the campus at which Sir Charles Kao first-pioneered fibre optics,” said Doug Loewe, CEO, Kao Data. “I’m proud of the way our technical team has continued to finesse the design envelope, and am excited to see our first, large-scale, liquid-cooled infrastructure deployment become a reality.” 

As mentioned earlier this week, Kao Data’s Harlow campus is now host to Ori’s first UK-based AI cloud region, and includes the country’s first tranche of state-of-the-art, NVIDIA H200 GPUs. Through AI cloud deployments such as this, and its heritage for startup, life science and pharmaceutical innovation, Harlow and the Cambridge-London Corridor have become a prime location for AI investment.