Data center news this week: October 15–21, 2026

Data center news this week, October 15–21, 2026, was less about single giant campuses and more about who is signing up and how the power gets there. Anthropic took its first data centre lease in Canada at EverWind’s planned 420 MW campus in Nova Scotia, Amazon backed a 960 MW small modular reactor plan in Indiana, four companies in Japan agreed to design data centers that make their own power, and SOAR AI set a December 31 date for its first AMD GPUs in Ohio.

The week at a glance

Anthropic takes its first Canadian lease at Point Tupper

On October 16, Nova Scotia energy company EverWind announced plans for more than $10 billion of private investment: more than $8 billion for a data centre campus at its existing Point Tupper industrial site and $2 billion for four onshore wind projects in the province (Bear Lake, Windy Ridge, Kmtnuk and Upper Afton). The campus starts with a 95 MW phase in late 2027, followed by a 325 MW expansion targeted for 2028, for 420 MW in total, subject to commercial, technical and regulatory conditions.

EverWind’s release named its tenant only as “a leading frontier AI developer” with a long-term lease for the initial phase. The same day, Anthropic said in a post on its LinkedIn page that it had signed the lease, its first data centre lease in Canada, and that it had signed the federal Responsible Data Centre Development Principles and committed tens of millions of dollars to community priorities.

EverWind says it will fund all grid connection and upgrade costs attributable to the campus, add several hundred megawatt-hours of battery storage, and design the site to reduce or stop drawing grid power when needed. The planned expansion will not be connected to the grid until the province’s system studies and approvals are complete. Cooling is a closed water–glycol loop: about 100,000 litres of water a day for the first phase and about 500,000 litres a day at 420 MW, according to the company.

Amazon backs a 960 MW reactor plan in Indiana

Amazon, X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) signed an agreement on October 19 to explore deploying X-energy’s Xe-100 small modular reactors in Indiana. The target is 12 reactors of 80 MW each, 960 MW in total, on the site of the former coal-fired Breed Generating Station in Sullivan County. Amazon is funding project development and would be the first customer to buy power from the plant, which would serve both the regional grid and Amazon’s data centers.

It is the second project under Amazon and X-energy’s goal of adding more than 5 GW of new US nuclear capacity by 2039, after the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility in Washington state. The release describes an exploratory agreement; it gives no construction or operating date. Background on reactor deals for AI campuses is in our nuclear power for data centers explainer.

Four companies plan self-powered data centers in Japan

On October 19, Hitachi announced that it, Brookfield Japan, Hartree Partners Singapore and Tokyo Gas had signed a memorandum of understanding on September 30 to develop green data centers in Japan. Tokyo Gas joins an earlier MoU between the other three companies from July 2025.

The model the companies want to standardise uses on-site generation as the main power source, backed by batteries and grid power, with redundancy across cooling and power distribution and modular buildings and power plants to shorten lead times. The first step is due diligence and a development plan for projects in the Kanto and Kyushu regions. The release gives no capacity, investment or timeline for those sites.

Amazon plans €16 billion for Germany in 2027

Amazon said on October 20, at the federal government’s Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, that it plans to invest more than €16 billion in Germany in 2027, spanning data centers and AI infrastructure, Amazon Leo satellite internet, logistics and Prime Video. Of that, €4.8 billion is planned to expand the AWS Europe (Frankfurt) Region. The release does not break out new sites or capacity in megawatts.

SOAR AI sets a December 31 date for its first GPUs in Ohio

SOAR AI gave a construction update on October 20 for its campus at a former paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio. The company says its substation and backup power are commissioned and data hall transformers and cooling equipment are being installed, and that it remains on schedule to put 4,096 AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs into service on December 31, 2026.

Next, the company plans 4,032 AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs on AMD’s Helios rack platform, with the hall ready for them in February 2027 and a contractual in-service date of June 30, 2027. Up to two further tranches of 4,032 MI455X GPUs, which would take the site to as many as 16,192 GPUs, depend on financing and customer contracts. SOAR AI says the campus has 154 MW of power available today and a roadmap to 480 MW, and targets a PUE of about 1.08 with direct liquid cooling. Specs for both chips are in our AI chips catalog.

Sferical One goes live in Sweden

On October 15, Sferical AI, the company set up by AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Saab, SEB and Wallenberg Investments, launched Sferical One, a shared system of two NVIDIA DGX SuperPODs with 1,152 GB300 GPUs in Linköping that has been running since late summer. Our Sferical One report covers the configuration and the partners.

What the week adds up to

None of this week’s new capacity is running yet except Sferical One, and most of it is a plan with conditions attached: EverWind’s expansion waits on Nova Scotia’s grid studies, the Indiana reactors are an agreement to explore, and the Japanese projects are at due diligence. The pattern is in how the deals are framed. EverWind, Anthropic and Amazon all state that the data center side pays for its own grid costs, and the Japanese group is designing around on-site generation from the start. Announced campuses are tracked in AI data centers, and our ranking of the largest AI data centers shows where these projects sit against the biggest announced sites.