2MW site to be cooled via Rochdale Canal
A UK-based production firm is planning to launch a data center in Manchester.
As reported by ProfilicNorth and others, Media Stream AI recently announced plans to develop a data center in Manchester’s Media City in Salford.
The 2MW site will use water from the nearby Rochdale canal for cooling via a closed-loop heat exchange and dry coolers.
Working with Lenovo, the £50 million ($67.3m) facility will reportedly be able to offer 30-60kW rack densities and is targeting a PUE of less than 1.2.
The site will reportedly feature 1,100 Nvidia H200 GPUs within Lenovo’s ThinkSystem servers with Neptune warm-water direct-to-chip cooling, with potential to expand to more than 2,300 GPUs.
Further details weren’t shared, but the company said the site should come online in Q1 2026. It is also planning to develop its own virtual production studio and robotics lab.
Media Stream AI aims to provide AI services to broadcasters and the creative industries. On its website, Media Stream stated that it will offer access to Nvidia's L4, A10G, A4000, A5000, A6000, A100, H100, and L40 GPUs.
On its website, the company said it is also planning deployments in Germany and France later in 2026, though details weren’t shared.
MSAI added that it has also completed an agreement with the Government of Jamaica to build and operate the first AI data center in the country. When finished, the Manchester site will service Europe, while the Jamaica site will service Latin America.
Digital Realty is known to use river cooling – transferring heat from cold running water to a purified water system that removes heat from the servers – in France and the UK, while Green Mountain is set to deploy a river-cooled system at its upcoming facility in Germany.
Denv-R in France and Nautilus in California also use river cooling. Supermarket chain Lidl has said one of its German facilities also uses river cooling, and Norwegian operator Polar says one of its upcoming sites will rely on a nearby river. Google’s site in Finland relies on seawater cooling.
Source: DCD
