UNITED KINGDOM

The UK’ s Competition and Markets Authority( CMA) has concluded its two-year investigation into the country’ s cloud computing market, finding that competition is“ not working well.” The probe focused on the dominance of major hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services( AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The CMA’ s findings suggest that customers face significant hurdles when switching providers, leading to concerns about pricing, service limitations, and a lack of innovation. The move signals potential regulatory changes aimed at fostering a more open and competitive environment for data centre and cloud services in the UK, particularly with the rising demand for AI infrastructure.

AUSTRALIA

Australian real estate giant, Goodman Group, has announced a strong financial performance for its fiscal year, with a 13 % rise in operating profit to AUD $ 2.3 billion. The growth is primarily attributed to the booming global demand for data centres. Goodman’ s strategic focus on developing and acquiring sites for next-generation data centre facilities has been a key driver of its success. The company’ s results underscore how the surge in data-intensive applications, particularly AI and cloud services, is creating a lucrative opportunity for property developers with a specialism in digital infrastructure.

UNITED STATES

In a significant development for the data centre industry, Meta has entered a six-year,

US $ 10 billion partnership with Google Cloud. This massive deal allows Meta to utilise Google Cloud’ s extensive server, storage and networking infrastructure to support its rapidly expanding AI development efforts. Rather than relying solely on its own hyperscale data centres, this collaboration highlights the growing pressure on tech giants to secure sufficient computing power for AI workloads. The agreement is a prime example of how major companies are strategically combining their in-house infrastructure with external cloud services to meet unprecedented demand.

SPAIN

Global investment firm Blackstone is set to expand its data centre operations in Aragon,

Spain, with an additional investment of US $ 5 billion. The move builds on a previous commitment of € 7.5 billion, reinforcing the region’ s ambition to become a leading European hub for AI and cloud computing. The significant financial commitment demonstrates strong investor confidence in Spain’ s potential as a digital infrastructure powerhouse. The investment is driven by the growing need for high-performance computing capabilities and solidifies Aragon’ s position as a strategic location for major tech players.

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