Kao Data Harlow Campus (The Core)

The story

In 1966 at Harlow's Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Sir Charles Kao published the breakthrough research on low-loss glass fiber that earned him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics and launched the fiber-optic revolution. Fifty years later, Kao Data constructed its flagship colocation campus on that exact technological birthplace. Operating with indirect evaporative cooling and HVO-fueled generators, the facility achieved fame in 2021 when NVIDIA installed Cambridge-1, then the UK's most powerful supercomputer dedicated to healthcare AI research.

Notable

• Built on the former STL campus where Nobel laureate Charles Kao co-developed fiber optics in 1966.
• Operates indirect evaporative cooling achieving an annualized PUE of 1.2 at high densities without chillers.
• Host of Cambridge-1, the UK's most powerful AI supercomputer built by NVIDIA in 2021 before migration.
• Runs on 100% renewable electricity backed by hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) instead of standard diesel.

Expansions

• 2018: KLON-01 opens on former STL site with 8.8 MW IT load
• 2021: hosts NVIDIA Cambridge-1 AI supercomputer
• 2024: second data centre KLON-02 launched expanding campus capacity