Koch Rides the Data Center Boom

The Center for Media and Democracy’s Don Wiener: “Koch Inc., a diversified multinational conglomerate with strong roots in petrochemicals, is probably best known for the fleet of organizations that it and its CEO, Charles Koch, bankrolls to influence public policy and elections in the US. But it’s also a major player in the data center building boom, with a $15-billion stake in the industry. Koch Real Estate Investments (KREI), one of Koch’s in-house investment arms, launched Edged US in 2024 in partnership with Jakob Carnemark, a technology entrepreneur who founded Aligned Data Centersa decade earlier and later sold it to private equity firms. According to Koch, Edged leverages the company’s capabilities in real estate, infrastructure, and large-scale cooling and power, and works with KREI “to partner with the world’s biggest tech companies to meet the growing demand for data centers.” Edged claims its “ultra-efficient” methods save on the massive amounts of water and energy used by data centers — claims that have not shielded it from strong community opposition for its lack of transparency. Edged now owns seven data centers in the US — in Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Kansas City, and Phoenix — with six new sites proposed or in development in Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. The company touts its “expertise… in finding and buying land, organizing large construction projects, and procuring the necessary power agreements with local utilities.” It also points out that it has “tapped into the vast expertise found across Koch companies” to provide innovative solutions to the significant power and water needs data centers demand. In late July, KREI began exploring the sale of Edged and is now considering multiple bids as high as $15 billion or more, according to Bloomberg…”