Singapore-based data center platform company, Digital Edge, has broken ground its new carrier neutral data center facility in downtown Tokyo.
Through the company’s LinkedIn post, Digital Edge said it held the groundbreaking ceremony of the “TYO7” site, a project in partnership with Japanese real estate developer, Hulic. TYO7 is an interconnect focused project designed to address Tokyo’s growing demand for data center development and further enhance the Digital Edge ecosystem in Tokyo. The new facility is only one kilometer from Otemachi, the central network hub of Japan. The company expects the facility to be ready for service in early 2025.
Digital Edge, formed by Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, first unveiled plans for the new data center in March. The company has over 500MW of data center capacity split between 17 data centers in six countries including Japan, South Korea, China, the Philippines, India and Indonesia.
The company’s TYO7 project was aimed at providing much needed interconnect focused colocation capacity to Japan, one of the world’s largest data center markets and is recognized as a leader in digital transformation and data driven businesses. Japan’s data center markets are focused on Tokyo and Osaka, with hyperscale platforms driving demand.
According to Structure Research, the data center market in Tokyo was worth around US$ 2.34 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow 7% year-on-year to US$ 2.49 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, Osaka is valued at US$ 544 million as of 2022 and is projected to grow 19% year-on-year to US$ 648 million in 2023, shifting from a DR-oriented location to a core market. The biggest challenges for the Tokyo data center market includes a 20-40% spike in construction costs following rising interest rates and longer time frames for building new data centers due to delays stemming from labor shortage.
