A data center development company led by former executives with Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined with a leading investment group to launch a platform for hyperscale data centers in North America.
LightHouse Data Centers, which calls itself a next-generation turnkey data center developer and operator, and Wharton Digital, an investment vehicle of Wharton Equity Partners, announced their partnership on January 14 after LightHouse came out of stealth. The companies said their joint effort combines LightHouse’s deep hyperscale development, leasing, and operational expertise with Wharton’s institutional capital. The groups said their platform is prepared to deliver more than 2 GW of capacity to supply growing demand from hyperscale, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud customers.
“We are excited to join forces with Wharton to build a premier data center platform at a time of unprecedented demand,” said Nick Etscheid, co-founder and CEO of LightHouse. “Wharton immediately understood the scale of what we are building, and this partnership allows us to accelerate delivery of next-generation infrastructure precisely when the market needs it.”
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Wharton, which has decades of experience in real estate, as part of the transaction has invested in LightHouse and contributed its powered land business and related properties to the platform. The groups said their combined expertise will created a “robust development pipeline with a long-term runway spanning both hyperscale campuses and major metro infill sites.”
Wharton Equity Partners founder and chairman Peter C. Lewis has been appointed chairman of LightHouse. The company said Wharton’s funding will enable corporate growth and a project pipeline expansion for LightHouse.
LightHouse currently has about 300 MW of operating power capacity, and more than 2 GW in active development, across markets in the U.S. Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest. The company said it also has targeted infill locations near major metropolitan areas. LightHouse said it plans on delivering multiple data center campuses later this year and also early in 2027, “each with significant follow-on power capacity,” which it said would deliver on the company’s strategy of providing both speed and scale for its customers.
“We are seeing unprecedented demand for capacity in 2026 and 2027,” said Ben Basson, co-founder and chief development officer of LightHouse. “Given our team’s experience leading major AWS region expansions and launching gigawatt-scale campuses, our team is uniquely positioned to deliver large-scale capacity on accelerated timelines for our customers.”
LightHouse on Wednesday said its facilities are purpose-built for next-generation, high-density AI workloads. The company’s sites include liquid-cooled architectures, while supporting traditional hyperscaler core services.
“We are in the very early stages of one of the greatest paradigm shifts our world has ever seen and I am excited to join Nick and Ben’s vision to build something special and differentiated in delivering the infrastructure needed to support our digital economy,” said Lewis. Etscheid and Basson previously spent nearly a decade delivering more than $10 billion in data center projects for AWS, along with another data center provider.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
