The closed agreement comes hot on the heels of Maryland Governor Moore’s signing of the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act of 2024 (CISA), which clarifies guidance for the use of back-up generators for critical infrastructure developments including data centres.
“We are excited to welcome a new customer to the Quantum Ecoscale campus,” said Josh Snowhorn, founder and CEO of Quantum Loophole.
“Our site in Frederick, Maryland is unlike any other data centre siting opportunity currently available,” he added.
Quantum Loophole owns over 2100 acres of land in Frederick County Maryland, on a former aluminium smelting plant. Rather than build its own data centres on the campus, Snowhorn and his team are developing it to provide the four crucial building blocks required for data centre operators to build their own facility, specifically land, fibre, water and power.
The campus is located 20 miles north of the internet ecosystem of Northern Virginia. The company believes that its development is revolutionising the site selection process for large-scale data centre developers by ensuring a holistic and comprehensive approach to data centre developments that considers community, the environment and government in its process.
In an interview with Capacity earlier this year, Snowhorn outlined how the data centre industry needs to work in harmony with the local environment and community to overcome its negative reputation.
Snowhorn said that Quantum Loophole’s approach to delivering land, power, water and connectivity while designing in partnership with nature is changing the way industrial developments work in concert with the environment.
Last month, Quantum Loophole announced a 600 acre nature reserve on its data centre campus.
Designed in partnership with the University of Maryland, the reserve will have one million plants, purposely designed to act as a carbon-sink and enabling the operation of the first carbon negative industrial-development of its kind.
The reserve is part of Maryland’s wildlife corridor network and when complete will be open to the public to use walking trails.
It is also designed to act as a buffer between human and industrial environments. This buffer ensures the health of the viewscape, soundscape, and the community by using berms, trees, and public trails to create benefits beyond traditional data centre development.
Quantum Loophole is also constructing what it claims is the world’s largest fibre optic network ring, QLoop. QLoop is a hyperscale fibre network stretching over 40 miles and connects the Quantum Frederick camps with Northern Virginia’s data centre ecosystem.
