Previously signed a lease for the site in October 2024
Neocloud provider CoreWeave has purchased a data center it was leasing at the Northeast Science & Technology Center (NEST) in Kenilworth, Union County, New Jersey.
In a transaction valued at $322 million, CoreWeave has purchased the 107-acre campus. Newmark arranged the sale and represented the sellers, Machine Investment Group and Onyx Equities.
CoreWeave signed a lease for building 11 at the campus, located at 2000 Galloping Hill Road, in October 2024. At the time, the company was planning to invest $1.2 billion in converting the 280,000 sq ft (26,010 sqm) former lab and manufacturing building into a data center. The previous owners were also expected to spend more than $50 million on the project.
CoreWeave has now purchased the entire two-million-square-foot "mixed-use" campus, featuring office, lab, and R&D space, as well as a 50MW substation, cogeneration and chiller plants, and a central boiler facility.
The campus was acquired by Onyx Equities and Machine Investment Group in 2023 for $187.5 million, which planned to create a mixed-use life sciences and innovation hub. DCD has contacted CoreWeave for information about the cloud provider's plans for the rest of the site.
Newmark's co-head of strategic advisory, Andrew Warin, and executive vice chairman Josh King, led the sale.
Speaking on the acquisition, King said: "This milestone sale builds on our longstanding track record of delivering strategic outcomes for data center investors and developers. As AI infrastructure evolves, we’re seeing capital flood into locations where power, entitlement, and connectivity converge—and this site checks every box.”
CoreWeave seems to be shifting towards a business model wherein it owns more of its data center sites. While the company self-builds data centers and leases capacity from several other operators, including Lincoln, Chirisa, Flexential, TierPoint, Digital Realty, DataBank, Switch, Galaxy, and Applied Digital, in early July it announced it was acquiring data center developer Core Scientific - from which it leases around 840MW of data center capacity - for $9 billion.
CoreWeave CEO, Michael Intrator, said at the time of the Core Scientific acquisition that "verticalizing the ownership of Core Scientific’s high-performance data center infrastructure enables CoreWeave to significantly enhance operating efficiency and de-risk our future expansion, solidifying our growth trajectory."
