4 things to know about the global tech company bringing its headquarters to Oklahoma

Northern Data, a Germany-based data center company with sites in Europe and North America, will build a new operation in Oklahoma as its headquarters on the continent.

Corporate and state officials announced the plan at a news conference Wednesday.

Here are four things you should know about the announcement.

The data center will be built at MidAmerica Industrial Park

Northern Data’s Oklahoma data center will be built on 100 acres at MidAmerica Industrial Park in Pryor, which is also home to one of Google’s data centers.

The company operates 10 data centers in Germany, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, Canada and the United States. It has plans to continue expansion on both continents.

CEO Aroosh Thillainathan said the project in Oklahoma is expected to come online within two years. The center will provide high-performance computing power for customers, and also will serve as a cryptocurrency mining operation for Northern Data.

“Our campus design is going beyond mining, extending to cloud services and even establishing a research lab dedicated to the discovery of future data processing applications,” he said.

The project will cost about $270 million.

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Aroosh Thillainathan, CEO and founder of Northern Data, left, and Christopher Yoshida, president and CFO, speak Wednesday during a news conference at the Oklahoma Capitol. Northern Data will build its North American operational headquarters at MidAmerica Industrial Park in Pryor, drawing power from the Grand River Dam Authority.

The center will be powered by water, wind and gas

Data centers are large consumers of power.

At full capacity, the modular design of this data center will draw up to 250 megawatts of power each month from the Grand River Dam Authority, a principal supplier of electricity to the industrial park.

That’s enough electricity to power 225,000 homes, the company said.

GRDA produces energy through hydroelectric, wind turbine and natural gas power generators.

The utility will provide an initial 10 MW of power, then expand to 50 MW by the end of this year. The data center ultimately will have five structures filled with racks of computers, with each one building drawing 50 MW per month.

There are no tax incentives from the state as part of the construction and operation of the data center, but Northern Data will participate in a long-term power agreement with GRDA.

Northern Data President Christopher Yoshida, CEO Aroosh Thillainathan and Gov. Kevin Stitt are shown Wednesday at a news conference announcing the company

New jobs are expected

Initially, Northern Data plans to hire 150 employees to run operations, administration and conduct research and development at the data center, which would almost double the company’s current number of employees. As the company grows, officials expect the Pryor location could be home to 300 employees, many in the technical and engineering fields that pay high wages.

“I would even argue that some of our higher-end jobs and management jobs will be located here, as well,” said President and Chief Financial Officer Christopher Yoshida. “This is not a call center. This is a core campus and a headquarters for us. We tend to use it as such.”

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Oklahoma Commerce Secretary Scott Mueller speaks Wednesday during a news conference announcing that Northern Data will build its North American operational data center headquarters at MidAmerica Industrial Park in Pryor.

Customers likely to be other businesses

As more of the modern economy relies on high-performance computing power to run their operations, data centers like this one are beneficial for companies who don’t have the money or desire to stand up their own data center.

Yoshida said Oklahoma’s relatively low energy costs will let Northern Data compete against larger data center providers. The goal is to provide computing power when a customer needs it.

“A lot of graphics rendering, pharmaceutical, health care, engineering and education don’t require guaranteed uptime, and we can be that on-demand partner,” he said.

Staff writer Dale Denwalt covers Oklahoma’s economy and business news for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Dale? He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @denwalt. Support Dale’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.