Telehouse Completes £220m Acquisition of East India Dock Campus, Plans 65MW AI-Ready Data Center in London

KDDI-owned data center operator Telehouse has finalized the purchase of the Inventory Estate in East London's East India Dock from LaSalle Investment Management and Trilogy Real Estate for more than £220 million ($294 million), marking a significant expansion of its London Docklands campus and reinforcing the site's position as one of Europe's leading connectivity hubs.

The acquisition, announced this week by KDDI Corporation and Telehouse, secures land adjacent to Telehouse's existing Docklands facility at 2 Clove Crescent. The site currently hosts two office buildings totaling 483,000 square feet (44,862 square meters), with planning consent already in place for a 376,000-square-foot (35,000-square-meter) data center. The new facility is designed to deliver 65MW of high-density, AI-ready capacity, addressing the growing demand for infrastructure capable of supporting artificial intelligence workloads across industries including healthcare, education, and financial services.

Mark Pestridge, managing director of Telehouse Europe, described the purchase as "an important step in the long-term development of our London Docklands campus," adding that the expansion provides space for future growth to support customers' digital ambitions. "As demand for AI-ready infrastructure grows, we remain focused on sustainable operations, community engagement, and creating opportunities in the local area," he said. Takayo Takamuro, executive officer and European chief executive of Telehouse, noted that the new data center will be one of the largest facilities in the London Docklands campus and will reinforce its role as the leading connectivity hub in Europe.

The transaction follows reports in March that Telehouse and KDDI had agreed to acquire the site, though the company declined to comment at the time. The property, once part of the historic East India Company docks, was converted into an office campus in the early 1990s and was purchased by LaSalle and Trilogy from Criterion Capital in 2015 for £170 million ($227 million), subsequently repositioned for educational use. The two firms placed the site on the market last October, reportedly seeking £247.5 million ($330.6 million).

Chris Lewis, head of UK transactions at LaSalle Investment Management, said the refurbishment works undertaken with Trilogy to regenerate East India Dock into a mixed-use innovation campus had paved the way for the new development. "We look forward to watching its progress as the Docklands are set to host an important AI-ready data center, critical to powering London's tech sector," he said. LaSalle, a subsidiary of JLL, manages $86.8 billion in private and public real estate equity and debt investments, while Trilogy specializes in revitalizing underperforming assets.

The development adds to Telehouse's expanding London footprint. The company's London North facility, opened in the 1990s, was the first purpose-built carrier-neutral data center in Europe, and the campus now comprises six buildings, including Telehouse West Two, a nine-story facility that broke ground in October and is scheduled for completion in 2028. Founded in 1998, Telehouse operates data centers across London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Paris, Marseille, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangkok, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. The latest acquisition underscores the intensifying race among operators to secure land and power capacity in established connectivity hubs as AI-driven demand reshapes data center requirements across Europe.