ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE – Four years ago, T5 Data Centers founder and CEO Pete Marin acted on a hunch that a data center building boom was imminent.
Marin hired Tom Mertz, formerly CEO of Virginia-based CPG, to spearhead T5’s services division and prepare it for an eventual spinoff.
It was a very prescriptive and direct edict [to Mertz]: We want to scale this,” Marin said.
The day has come, as EverOn Data Center Services officially launched on Sept. 1 in Atlanta. The company leased about 21,600 square feet at Allen Morris Co.’s Star Metals Offices in West Midtown; it has more than 800 employees, not all of whom are located in Atlanta.
The expectation is that EverOn will have a couple thousand employees in a few years, while T5 will have about 100. EverOn will handle construction and operations of data centers — a more labor-intensive enterprise — while T5 will retain the task of development. The separation is meant in part to open new construction opportunities with developers who may have viewed T5 as a competitor.
EverOn’s launch coincides with the hypergrowth of the data center industry, which is rising in lockstep with artificial intelligence. Trillions of dollars are slated to be poured into data centers, and data centers in the United States are expected to need about 125 additional gigawatts of electricity by 2031, according to Bank of America analysts.
With more than two decades of experience in public relations and journalism, Mike is a strategic communications leader who focuses on media relations and reputation management.