14 March 2025
Kao Data has officially announced the construction of KLON-03, a new 17.6MW high-performance data centre at its Harlow campus. This facility will be powered entirely by renewable energy and will feature hybrid-cooling technology.
KLON-03 is purpose-built to support both liquid-cooled infrastructure for AI applications and traditional air-cooled servers within the same Technology Suite. This development comes in response to the increasing demand for high-density data centre capacity, reinforcing Kao Data’s established reputation in the AI infrastructure space.
With its adherence to next-generation design principles, KLON-03 is poised to create an ideal environment for AI inference and training workloads, located conveniently near London’s low-latency internet exchanges. The rapid deployment of this facility also highlights a notable shift in London's compute landscape, as demands for high-density AI cloud capacity increasingly move towards the north and east of the capital.
“This year marks ten years since our vision for the Harlow campus was first conceived, and I’m delighted that our concept continues to be validated. Harlow is now firmly established as the UK’s leading destination for high-performance computing (HPC), AI cloud, and GPU-supported deployments,” said David Bloom, Founder and Chairman of Kao Data. “KLON-03 will set a new standard for our industrial-scale data centre platform and will align with the Government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, providing one of the country’s largest footprints of liquid-cooled data centre capacity.”
KLON-03 will integrate advanced features designed for next-generation AI workloads. Each Technology Suite will implement hybrid-cooled, hot aisle containment (HAC) systems that can support high-density compute and GPU-accelerated infrastructure, with rack densities reaching up to 130kW. The facility will also maintain the same design and sustainability standards as its predecessors and aims to become another NVIDIA DGX-Ready data centre, along with obtaining BREEAM certification.
All deployments at KLON-03 will incorporate Digital Twins functionality, ensuring that customers’ compute footprints are optimized and that their unique infrastructure requirements are seamlessly addressed, all while achieving an SLA-backed Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
“The era of AI is undeniably upon us, and what better way to celebrate UK AI innovation than on the campus where Sir Charles Kao first pioneered fibre optics,” said Doug Loewe, CEO of Kao Data. “I’m proud of our technical team for refining the design, and I’m eager to see our first large-scale liquid-cooled infrastructure deployment come to fruition.”
Kao Data’s Harlow campus is also home to Ori’s first UK-based AI cloud region, featuring the country’s first deployment of state-of-the-art NVIDIA H200 GPUs. These AI cloud initiatives, combined with Harlow’s rich heritage in startup and pharmaceutical innovation, have positioned the Harlow and Cambridge-London Corridor as a prime destination for AI investment.
