Kao Data secures funding from Legal & General

Kao Data opened Kao Data London One, the first of four 8.8MW data centres, at its 35.2MW Kao Data Campus around one year ago. The ultra-low PUE £230m data centre development has attracted widespread industry and customer interest for its innovative approach to design, construction and operations.

Legal & General has partnered with existing investors in Kao Data, Goldacre Noé Group (“Goldacre”), the technology investment arm of Noé Group’s international asset management and investment business. This investment demonstrates a commitment from Legal & General to deliver the digital infrastructure required for Future Cities, and marks the first step of an ambitious partnership with Goldacre to drive the strategic expansion and accelerated growth of the UK data industry.

The Kao Data London One facility provides a blueprint to develop further class-leading, hyperscale-inspired wholesale colocation data centres that implement OCP (Open Compute Project) recommended capabilities and offer this leading-edge approach to data centre flexibility and scalability.

Kao’s best-in-class design will support its commitment to achieve market leading efficiency, strong resilience and excellent connectivity, whilst also retaining flexibility for customer specification requirements. The power efficiency, resilience and low cost of operations are as a result of reduced electrical and mechanical engineering complexity, standardisation and increased speed of deployment. In addition, the data centre has attained the certification of BREEAM excellent, reinforcing the sustainability credentials of Kao Data Campus.

Kao Data London One is the first wholesale colocation data centre in the United Kingdom to utilise Indirect Evaporative Cooling with no mechanical refrigeration to maintain the ASHRAE TC9.9 environmental guidelines, delivering an ultra-low PUE <1.2 across all load levels. In addition, Kao has implemented new environmental monitoring initiatives on gaseous contamination to ensure hosted IT equipment is maintained within manufacturer’s warranty requirements.

Kao Data’s strategic location, in the emerging North London cluster servicing the London to Cambridge corridor, is fast becoming a hub for high-density fibre connectivity routes from Dublin to Amsterdam. As key locations for hyperscalers, Kao Data can capitalise on emerging opportunities both in terms of industry and geography.

Kao Data’s platform model of highly functional and flexible colocation data centres is a design that can be replicated across the vast majority of environmental and geographical locations, creating a highly cost effective and easily managed development process.

The massive year-on-year increase in data creation, as well as the growing need for agility and state of the art infrastructure, has led to an outsourcing shift from in-house facilities to a hybrid IT model of third party providers and multi cloud environments, resulting in an increase in demand for data centre and platform services. The partnership between Legal & General and Goldacre is focused on driving the necessary technology and infrastructure development to meet this rising demand.

Matteo Colombo, Director of Strategic Private Capital Investments at Legal & General Capital said: “As technology continues to evolve and our future cities become more connected, we see data centres as critical infrastructure of national importance. At a time of increased sensitivity around data sovereignty, the UK lacks its own flagged data centre platform. We see a market gap, and Kao presents a unique opportunity to build and create a leading UK proposition.

Legal & General is pleased to have invested in Kao and to have taken a lead role alongside Goldacre in building out the business, which is one of the first major new UK data centre companies since 2008.”

David Bloom, Founder of Goldacre said: “This significant partnership is a landmark moment, both for the continued growth of the Kao Data and for the development of the wider UK data centre industry. With this substantial injection of capital, Kao Data is uniquely well-placed to strengthen its position as an innovative, performance-led business. An ever-increasing digital footprint is the basis of our entire digital economy, and we are proud to provide the platform that makes this possible. Given the importance of our national data industry, we look forward to working with Legal & General to create further opportunities to accelerate the emergence of state-of- the-art infrastructure nationwide”.

Jan Daan Luycks, CEO at Kao Data said: ”Inspired by hyperscale data centres and OCP-ready, the Kao Data platform has been well received by the critical industry engineering community, end customers and colocation service providers from Europe, the USA and the Far East. Now, with the financial backing of Legal & General as a major investor, Kao Data has the opportunity to extend its reach and bring high efficiency, high resiliency and highly connected wholesale data centres to new customers both in the UK and new regions.”