nLighten launches edge data center platform for businesses in Germany
With the nLighten edge data center platform, companies benefit from the advantages of distributed data centres designed for future generations
Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 08.02.2023 – nLighten, a portfolio company of I Squared Capital, announced today that its edge data centers will begin operations in Germany this year. With ten strategic locations in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgart, customers will have access to a human- size, low latency data center platform with strategic proximity to their end-users. nLighten’s select locations are well matched to Germany’s distributed economy with a local presence in key economic zones and aim to provide users within the region with a latency of 2 to 6ms.
This advanced edge data center platform is a step forward offering for companies wanting to place compute, content or applications closer to their users. I Squared has committed more than $500 million of equity to support nLighten’s growth plans across Europe to deliver solutions for both existing and emerging low-latency applications.
"We are very excited to provide our services in Germany," said Harro Beusker, CEO and Co- Founder of nLighten. “We believe that Germany is one of the best places to launch our edge data center platform with presence in all key economic hubs. From here we will expand into several other European markets.
”The nLighten infrastructure model collaborates with the utility sector to support emissions reduction through grid stabilization and the recovery and export of heat to the community. This creates an exciting new virtuous cycle between increasing data consumption and environmental sustainability."The motivation to create nLighten came from our desire to make data centers local, to provide for evolving data use and environmental functions in the community,” says Chad McCarthy, CTO and Co-Founder of nLighten.
Target markets and ecosystem
nLighten serves companies that require a nearby data center, or multiple locations across Germany. nLighten creates direct links between customers and service providers, enabling a scalable open digital marketplace running on its infrastructure. This offers enterprises and business partners an extensive ecosystem of carrier-neutral and supplier-agnostic solutions including B2B connectivity, content delivery, networks and cloud services.
The company works closely with industry partners, like telcos, cloud providers and system integrators, who advise nLighten customers and offer their services in the data centers. nLighten data centers are both digital and physical marketplaces, providing modern, comfortable office and meeting facilities.
About nLighten
With its German headquarter in Eschborn, near Frankfurt am Main, nLighten is a digital infrastructure platform and a portfolio company of I Squared Capital. We are developing ten innovative data centers distributed across Germany’s key economic hubs to provide best-in-class network access to local industry, private users and the mobile workforce.
The strategic distribution of nLighten data centers, enables the company to have a country-wide presence in all key German cities and offers access to low latency and proximity to their end-users. The nLighten data centers are designed to meet the increasing demand for faster and more reliable data processing and storage, while also being mindful of environmental impact.
nLighten was founded in 2021 by a core team with many years’ experience and wide-ranging expertise in the data center sector. The team’s main motivation was to create the next step for the data center industry and align data centers with the green transition.
nLighten acquired its initial data centers from EXA Infrastructure (both portfolio companies of I Squared Capital) and plans to begin operations in the second half of 2023. nLighten’s goal is to set up and operate multiple leading edge data center platforms in Europe.
