Former LBNL Supercomputing Site in Oakland to Be Reborn as 20MW AI Data Center

Real estate firm Behring Cos. is planning to transform a vacant former supercomputing facility in Oakland, California, into a 20MW data center, according to a report from the San Francisco Business Times. The property at 415 20th Street, once operated as the Oakland Scientific Facility for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), has sat empty for years and is now being repositioned for high-density AI compute workloads.

The four-story building currently offers 4.5MW of power, but Behring said it is renovating the site and significantly expanding its electrical capacity to accommodate dense AI infrastructure. The company noted that the facility could host either a single tenant or multiple tenants, depending on demand. "It's going to be one of the most capable AI inference compute facilities in the inner Bay Area," Behring told the Business Times. "It offers a much more convenient and much more heavy utility-type space that's directly on BART, it's accessible, it's super close to San Francisco."

Since Behring began marketing the property a few weeks ago, the firm said it has hosted 15 tours for robotics companies, research and lab AI firms, and cloud providers—an early signal of strong interest from the region's AI-driven tech ecosystem. The building's location near public transit and its proximity to San Francisco make it an attractive option for companies seeking urban data center capacity without the constraints of more remote campuses.

Behring, a privately held real estate investment firm based in California, acquired the vacant 83,000-square-foot (7,710 sqm) office building from Hines in December for $6.8 million. Hines had purchased the site in 2019 from the University of California Regents for $36 million, with plans to build a 39-story, 800,000 sq ft (74,322 sqm) office tower. Those plans were abandoned in 2023, with Hines stating at the time that the project was "not economically feasible to develop in the current market." Hines subsequently offered the property to BART for a new police headquarters, but the transit agency selected a different building.

The Oakland Scientific Facility has a storied history in high-performance computing. Beginning around 2001, it housed hardware for the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), including an IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer, a Cray T3E system, and several other clusters. The data center portion of the building was reportedly vacated around 2015, while the university continued to occupy office space until at least 2020. Much of the ground floor still features raised-floor data center infrastructure, totaling more than 20,000 sq ft (1,858 sqm), which could reduce the cost and timeline of the conversion.

The project underscores a broader trend in the data center industry: the repurposing of existing urban facilities to meet soaring demand for AI compute capacity. While California remains a major data center market, most facilities are concentrated in San Jose, with smaller hubs in Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco. Digital Realty operates its OAK10 facility in Oakland at 720 2nd Street, but available capacity in the inner Bay Area is scarce. Behring's redevelopment of the LBNL site could offer a rare opportunity for AI-focused tenants seeking low-latency access to the Bay Area's tech and research communities, while also revitalizing a vacant landmark property.