An artificial intelligence cloud computing firm has signed a lease for 280,000 square feet at pharmaceutical giant Merck's former global headquarters in North Jersey, where it plans to create a $1.2 billion state-of-the-art data center.
Roseland, New Jersey-based CoreWeave will be undertaking a conversion of 11 Nest Drive in Kenilworth, a former lab and manufacturing building located at the Northeast Science & Technology Center, known as NEST. Woodbridge, New Jersey-based Onyx Equities led a group of investors that acquired the Merck campus for $187.5 million in February last year, according to CoStar data, rebranding and repositioning the property as a Northeast life science and tech research hub.
Onyx and its partner, New York-based Machine Investment Group, plan to invest $50 million in the CoreWeave project. CoreWeave, which calls itself the "AI Hyperscaler," offers a cloud platform of software and provides infrastructure to power AI. The NEST data center will be the first one that CoreWeave has in the Garden State. Last year, the company more than quadrupled its data center footprint and is on track to end the year with 28 data centers globally, according to Onyx.
The boom in the fledgling AI industry is driving demand nationally for cutting-edge data centers, as exemplified with CoreWeave and Kenilworth and other players. Earlier this month, Oracle struck a deal to lease a $3.4 billion data center campus designed to cater to artificial intelligence users in West Texas. For several years now, New Jersey has mounted an effort to persuade tech and life sciences companies to come to or expand in the state.
“CoreWeave’s commitment to invest over a billion dollars at the NEST campus demonstrates New Jersey’s leading role in artificial intelligence, and our innovation strategies are working,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement. “Through collaboration with utilities, government, investors, and real estate developers, we’re committed to attracting businesses that will build an innovation economy for the future. ... This new data center will further fuel our state’s leadership in innovation.”
Public Service Electric & Gas, New Jersey’s largest utility and known as Public Service Electric & Gas, will be readying the area’s electrical infrastructure to support the energy needs of the Kenilworth data center facility. The utility currently serves over 30 large data centers.
NEST has 2 million square feet of of space on a site with 100-plus acres. The property is zoned for life science innovation and data centers. In a statement, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator credited Murphy with helping to spark the creation of an AI ecosystem in New Jersey.
John Saraceno, Onyx co-founder and managing principal, also weighed in.
“This partnership positions the NEST campus as a major hub for data processing, AI, and biopharma innovation,” he said in a statement. "CoreWeave will be a key cornerstone of NEST, as life science and biotechnology tenants at the campus will benefit from CoreWeave’s advanced cloud infrastructure to support their AI-driven projects and boost research and development capabilities.”