CEO Josh Payne of Arkon Energy, a provider of data center infrastructure, confidentially told TechCrunch that the business has concluded a $110 million private fundraising round to expand its operations.
Bluesky Capital Management headed the round, in which Kestrel 0x1 and Nural Capital also took part.
The business started in Australia with a 5-megawatt plant in 2021. Since then, it has expanded to over 130 megawatts and into other nations and regions, including Europe and the United States.
Payne stated, “These sites appeal to clients with high-power computing demands, as well as bitcoin miners and AI [or] machine learning clients.” According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 400–900 households may be powered by 1 megawatt annually.
In keeping with its goal to raise the company’s total megawatts by 130% by mid-2024, an extra 200 megawatt capacity will be acquired across new data centers in Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas, with an estimated expenditure of $80 million. According to Payne, Arkon also has a 100-megawatt plant in Ohio that it acquired in June.
The massive domestic consumer demand, the mature and robust energy industry with numerous flexible and deregulated markets, political and regulatory stability, and the appeal of the U.S. to institutional investors are just a few of the factors that make it an appealing market for us, according to Payne. “There are many underutilized, stranded power generation assets in the United States that are connected to some of the world’s most affordable electricity sources, many of which are renewable.”
According to Payne, most institutional-grade bitcoin mining firms are housed in the corporation’s U.S. data center portfolio. “As the owners of the underlying infrastructure assets, we are effectively landlords.”
The core of Arkon’s business strategy is the selective acquisition of distressed data center facilities worldwide. “We are witnessing an unparalleled and enormous demand for data center capacity of all kinds now and in the future, not only in the United States but worldwide. Our clients’ energy-intensive platforms need a massive quantity of well-maintained and controlled electrical infrastructure.
The remaining $30 million will support the generative AI and big language model training industries by creating an artificial intelligence cloud service project at Arkon’s data center in Norway. “Demand for large learning model applications and generative AI has accelerated profoundly over the last year,” he stated.
However, most of these items lack the physical infrastructure needed to power their processors and servers. By offering the fundamental infrastructure layer that the AI industry needs, Arkon seeks to close that gap.
A spot ETF certification is imminent, and there has been a “meteoric rise in AI applications” over the past year. As a result, Payne stated that specialized data centers like Arkon’s are “poised to continue scaling exponentially” and that bitcoin may grow and be used in mainstream institutional markets.
