The Northeast Science and Technology (NEST) Center, a redevelopment of the former Merck global headquarters in Kenilworth, NJ, announced New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) as its first academic partner at the campus. The university plans to establish the NJIT @ NEST Center for Translational Research at the 100-acre site.

“The ecosystem created between the private and public sector and both large companies and startups is best anchored by academia,” explained John Saraceno, co-founder and managing principal of Onyx Equities. “For these reasons, we felt it was critical to bring NJIT—an institution of the highest caliber—to NEST. The decision for the university to move these facilities to the NEST campus will positively impact both healthcare and humanity.”

This partnership follows the recent announcements of CoreWeave establishing an AI co-location data center at the 11 NEST building and Revlon relocating its Science and Innovation Lab to part of the 15 NEST building. The location of CoreWeave and NJIT on the NEST campus supports NJIT’s growth in machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing and robotics.

Dan Loughlin of JLL and Jonathan Scheinberg of Outshine Properties represented the ownership group of Onyx Equities, Machine Investment Group and Pivot Real Estate Partners.  

Funds managed by Blue Owl Capital Inc., Chirisa Technology Parks, and PowerHouse Data Centers have executed a joint venture development agreement to develop large-scale AI/HPC data centers for CoreWeave, Inc. Newmark served as advisor to the joint venture.

The agreement is intended as the first stage of a partnership with the capacity to deploy up to $5 billion in capital for turnkey AI/HPC data center developments supporting CoreWeave and other hyperscale and enterprise data center customers.

The initial 120MW of capacity under the program will be delivered for CoreWeave in 2025 and 2026 at CTP’s 350-acre campus near Richmond, Virginia. Further deployments in the pipeline include brownfield and greenfield campuses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kentucky and Nevada.

Announcing the transaction today, Lee Hayes, President and CEO of CTP stated, “Through innovative structuring, broad financial distribution and the transactional expertise of our partners at Blue Owl, this partnership unlocks very substantial growth capital for one of the most important players in today’s AI hyperscale landscape.”