The accelerating global demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure has driven wholesale data centre developer EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure to commit more than $17 billion to a new high-density campus in Louisa County, Virginia. The planned 3.9 million square foot development will support over 1.1 gigawatts of power, adding significantly to the state’s position as a global hub for digital infrastructure.
The scale and location of the project underline Virginia’s strategic role in the AI economy. EdgeCore’s investment brings its total Virginia footprint to over 1.6 gigawatts, reinforcing the state’s already dominant position in data traffic, energy availability, and fibre connectivity. The announcement also signals a broader trend: hyperscale operators and infrastructure providers are moving inland, diversifying away from traditional urban concentrations to meet the power-hungry and latency-sensitive needs of AI workloads.
“The investment in this land enables EdgeCore to expand our growth in Central Virginia, providing our hyperscale and AI focused customers with scalable, cost-efficient data centre solutions,” said Lee Kestler, CEO of EdgeCore. While the financial scale is striking, the true significance lies in what this type of infrastructure is increasingly designed to support: the rapid development and deployment of AI at scale.
Infrastructure for AI’s exponential needs
As large language models and generative AI applications multiply across sectors, demand for compute is growing far faster than legacy data centre models can accommodate. Hyperscale facilities like EdgeCore’s Louisa County campus are now being purpose-built to host GPU-intensive AI training and inference operations. The planned 1.1GW capacity will place the site among the largest globally and aligns closely with the requirements of AI-native cloud providers.
Power, cooling and land use are all being re-engineered to meet this AI-centric future. EdgeCore’s choice of a closed-loop air-cooled system, with a water usage effectiveness rating below 0.01 L/kWh, reflects growing concern over environmental impact and sustainability—especially as generative AI drives exponential increases in data centre energy consumption.
The announcement also highlights the critical role of energy cooperatives in enabling AI infrastructure. John Hewa, CEO of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, confirmed support through its affiliate Hyperscale Energy, describing EdgeCore’s investment as aligned with “the growing demands of the digital economy.”
From backbone to boomtown
Virginia already hosts the densest concentration of data centres in the world, anchored by the fibre routes running through Ashburn and subsea connections at Virginia Beach. Governor Glenn Youngkin characterised the state as “the world capital for the infrastructure on which the internet and the entire global economy runs,” positioning EdgeCore’s expansion as a continuation of this trajectory.
Yet while the economic promise is clear, local engagement remains essential. William Jabjiniak, EdgeCore’s senior vice president for community and government relations, emphasised a “community-first” approach, developed through previous campus builds in Arizona, California and Nevada. The company has committed to job creation, minimal traffic disruption, and limited draw on local water resources.
By betting on Louisa County, EdgeCore is both responding to and reshaping the geography of AI infrastructure. As data centre footprints grow to accommodate AI’s technical demands, and as political pressure increases to distribute development more equitably across regions, locations like Louisa are becoming critical to the next phase of AI deployment.
This announcement brings EdgeCore’s active data centre markets to six across the US, with each site optimised for single-tenant hyperscale occupancy. The company’s focus on AI-ready infrastructure reflects a broader shift across the digital economy: from internet access to intelligent processing, and from capacity to capability. The speed, scale and specialisation required to support AI’s growth is driving a new wave of infrastructure investment—one that may determine not just where data is processed, but how value is created in the AI-driven economy.
