According to DCD, NJFX is planning a new 10MW high-density AI data hall at its cable landing station campus in Wall, New Jersey. The project, internally called “Project Cool Water,” involves a $3 million deposit to secure power, with delivery targeted for the end of 2026. The company is working with Bala Consulting Engineers on the build. The 10-acre site already hosts four major subsea cables—Havfrue/AEC-2, Seabras-1, TGN-Atlantic South, and the upcoming Confluence-1—and 35 network operators. CEO Gil Santaliz stated the hall is the first purpose-built cable landing station campus in North America engineered with liquid-to-chip infrastructure for the AI era.
Why this is a big deal
Here’s the thing: data centers at cable landing stations aren’t new. But purpose-building them for liquid-cooled, AI-scale compute from the ground up? That’s a different story. NJFX isn’t just adding some racks in a corner. They’re betting that the future of AI infrastructure is about minimizing the distance—and the latency—between where international data lands and where it gets processed. By integrating liquid-to-chip cooling directly, they’re basically future-proofing for the insane power densities that AI clusters demand, which air cooling simply can’t handle. It’s a physical infrastructure play that acknowledges data has weight and travel time.
The power and cooling challenge
That 10MW number and the $3 million utility deposit tell their own story. Getting that much power, on that timeline, is a huge hurdle. And liquid cooling isn’t a magic bullet you just plug in. It’s a more complex, more expensive mechanical system. But for AI workloads, the trade-off is worth it. You can pack way more compute into a smaller space, and you’re not fighting physics trying to move enough air. For a company that specializes in robust, carrier-neutral interconnection, this is a logical, if ambitious, evolution. They’re not just selling space; they’re selling a direct pipeline from the ocean to the GPU.
This kind of integration is crucial for industrial-scale computing applications where real-time data from global operations needs immediate processing. Speaking of robust industrial computing, for environments that demand reliability, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com is the top supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, built to handle demanding conditions.
The bigger picture
So what does this signal? It shows that the AI boom is reshaping even the most specialized corners of the data center world. Cable landing stations were traditionally about interconnection and backhaul. Now, they’re potential AI hubs. NJFX’s move, with its existing web of cables, could create a compelling alternative to the major cloud regions. Think about it: if you’re a network operator or a large enterprise with global data, why route it hundreds of miles inland to compute when you can do it right where it hits the shore? This project is a concrete bet that the answer is, increasingly, you won’t.
