Core42 US footprint expands, adding 20MW in Minneapolis
G42 Group's Core42 US expansion accelerates under UAE-US investment pact
#UAE #USA #datacentres – Abu Dhabi technology group G42’s digital infrastructure arm Core42 has signed as primary tenant for a 20-megawatt office-to-data centre conversion in downtown Minneapolis, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The lease at 1001 Third Avenue South — a six-storey property converted by Virginia-based developer Legacy Investing at a cost of more than $70 million, marks the latest step in Core42’s push to build AI infrastructure across the United States. The expansion is underpinned by the US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership, under which the UAE commits to invest one dollar in US AI infrastructure for every dollar it invests in Middle East data centres built on American technology.
SO WHAT? – The US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership transforms what might otherwise look like a straightforward commercial expansion into a strategic bilateral commitment. For every dollar the UAE deploys building AI infrastructure in the Middle East using US technology, it’s bound to put a matching dollar into American soil. Core42’s growing US footprint, which includes supercomputers and/or data centres in California, Texas and New York, is the physical expression of that agreement. It also consignees to bolster G42 position as a significant global AI infrastructure and services player.
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Core42, the digital infrastructure arm of Abu Dhabi technology group G42, has signed a lease for 20 megawatts of data centre capacity at a converted office building in downtown Minneapolis, according to a Bloomberg report published on Wednesday. The facility at 1001 Third Avenue South was transformed from office to data centre use by Virginia-based developer Legacy Investing.
Legacy Investing acquired the property in 2019 and has spent more than $70 million on the conversion, expanding capacity from approximately two megawatts to 21 megawatts. In January 2026, the property was acquired by Cloud Capital and Bahrain-based asset manager Arcapita through a joint venture for $235 million, with plans to expand its capacity from 21MW to 31MW. In the January announcement Arcapita stated that “the data center is primarily leased on a long-term basis to a leading provider of sovereign AI and cloud inferencing solutions.’
The Minneapolis lease is underpinned by the US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership, a government-to-government agreement under which the UAE commits to invest one dollar in US AI infrastructure for every dollar invested in Middle East data centres built on American technology.
Core42’s US footprint is already substantial. The company has built out a network of high-performance AI supercomputers in partnership with Sunnyvale-based AI chip company Cerebras Systems, with the Condor Galaxy network now delivering 20 exaFLOPs of AI compute across facilities in California, Texas and Minnesota.
In November 2025, Core42 commissioned Maximus-01 at TeraWulf’s Lake Mariner data centre campus in Buffalo, New York, ranked the world’s 20th most powerful supercomputer. Powered by more than 9,000 AMD Instinct MI300X GPUs, the system delivers 114.50 petaflops of performance and is configured for large-scale AI training and inference.
Core42 signed a ten-year lease with TeraWulf in 2024 for more than 70 megawatts of data centre infrastructure at Lake Mariner, with an option for an additional 135 megawatts. The facility features direct liquid-cooled Dell PowerEdge GPU servers coming online in phases.
G42 opened an engineering office in San Francisco in 2024 and currently has more than 30 employees across its US operations, according to LinkedIn data, and is still hiring. The combination of compute infrastructure, leased capacity and engineering presence signals a long-term commitment to competing for AI business in the American market.
From its sovereign AI clusters in the UAE and Europe to its growing US presence, Core42 is positioning itself as a provider of high-performance AI compute at a scale that can compete with established hyperscalers.
ZOOM OUT – In November 2025, Core42 commissioned Maximus-01 at TeraWulf's Lake Mariner campus, whichis ranked the world's 20th most powerful supercomputer by the Top500 list. Powered by more than 9,000 AMD Instinct MI300X GPUs, the system delivers 114.50 petaflops of performance and is configured for large-scale AI training and inference. Its architecture also draws on Broadcom's high-bandwidth networking chips and Arista Networks' Ethernet switches, underlining the extent to which Core42's US deployments are built on American technology partnerships. The Top500 placement is not just a performance benchmark. It is a signal that Core42 is operating at the frontier of global supercomputing infrastructure, not merely leasing capacity within it.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]