European data center firm Virtus has started construction on a new campus in Berlin, Germany.

The company last week broke ground on a new campus in the Marienpark business park.

The new campus will feature four 14.4MW buildings (BERLIN1-4), totaling 57.6MW of IT load at full build-out across 19,000 sqm (204,515 sq ft) of technical space.

Michael Dada, managing director of Germany at Virtus, said: “With this campus, we are clearly committed to Berlin as a location. We are not only investing in digital infrastructure, but also creating a sustainable foundation for the future viability of the economy and society.”

Plans for Virtus Berlin 1 were announced in May 2023. DATA2HEAT, a joint venture of Investa Real Estate and GASAG Group subsidiary GASAG Solution Plus, will make the data center’s waste heat usable and feed it into a heating network. At full build-out, the campus has the potential to supply around 5,000 households with sustainable local heating.

Georg Friedrichs, CEO of GASAG, added: “In the GASAG Group, we are strongly committed to the use of waste heat from data centers. In Berlin, we make it visible how digitalization and warmth can go hand in hand – climate-friendly, efficiently, and future-proof.”

GASAG is the main natural gas supplier and vendor in Berlin. The Marienpark is located on the site of a former GASAG gas plant. NTT is also developing in the park and set to reuse some of its facility’s waste heat for the local heating network.

Franziska Giffey, Mayor and Senator for Economic Affairs, Energy and Business, said: “The new Virtus data center in Marienpark is becoming an innovative digital backbone for cloud, AI, and high-performance applications in Berlin. Resource-saving operation, for example through the use of waste heat, is driving the sustainable development of the historic Marienpark into an innovative technology quarter.”

Virtus currently operates 11 data centers across four campuses in Greater London, totaling 77,000 sqm (828,825 sq ft) and 178MW of power. Another campus is in development in Buckinghamshire.

STT GDC picked up 49 percent of Virtus from Brockton Capital in June 2015 and made the company a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2017. Macquarie Asset Management recently took a 40 percent stake in the UK operator.

Virtus has previously said it has another 100MW pipeline of projects under consideration across the UK and Europe, with campuses planned in Italy, Spain, Poland, and elsewhere.

Another 300MW Berlin campus is planned in the Wustermark Megacampus in Brandenburg, to the west of the capital city.