An East Bay developer announced plans to build a 20,000-square-foot data center in downtown Oakland, which would support AI and robotics research at a much larger “innovation campus” a block away.
The proposed data center would be housed in a former supercomputer facility at 415 20th Street in Oakland, just above the 19th Street BART Station, as the San Francisco Business Times reports. Behring Companies purchased the 83,000-square-foot building last December for $6.8 million and is now renovating 20,000 square feet of it for dense AI computing.
The site was originally built to handle up to 20 megawatts of power when it was used by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, giving Behring an existing power-intensive infrastructure that can reportedly be repurposed for AI workloads without the same grid upgrades a new data center might require.
Behring said the space could be leased to a single company or divided among multiple tenants. In the first two weeks of marketing, the company had already hosted 15 tours for robotics companies, AI research and laboratory companies, cloud providers, and businesses looking for additional office space nearby, per the SF Business Times.
According to KTVU, the data center would support research and development at Stack Ventures’ 1.3-million-square-foot “innovation campus” at 1900 Broadway, which includes housing, offices, and facilities for AI and robotics companies. Behring also owns the nearby 1950 Franklin office building and a 635-space parking garage at 1901 Franklin that houses Tesla’s autonomous vehicle fleet.
Behring said the next phase of AI will increasingly involve physical-world applications, including autonomous vehicles, drones, smart buildings, and robotics, creating demand for places where companies can build and test those technologies. The company is also in talks with a prospective tenant about opening a working robotics lab and showroom on the ground floor of 1900 Broadway.
“When you’re walking by, it’s not just another coffee shop or another salad shop or something — you’re actually going to see robots training and performing and doing what they do,” Behring said.
The project has reportedly drawn mixed reactions from Oakland residents, with some questioning the environmental implications of data centers and others who told KTVU they were open to the possibility of new jobs, businesses, and investment downtown.
“What a nightmare,” said one resident on Reddit. “Energy costs are already sky high. Which city representatives should we contact to make sure this energy sucking polluter doesn't pass the cost to us?”
Another resident argued that the project is essentially making use of infrastructure that was already designed for heavy computing.
“It’s already one big computer,” they said. “Built right on a major access point for the internet. I’m against building shitty data centers, but this project is barely a change of use.”
A third Redditor replied, noting that the area has changed since the facility was used by Berkeley Lab.
“It also wasn’t a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood when it was in use.”
Behring has not yet announced when the data center is expected to be completed, saying additional details about the timeline will be released soon.
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Image: Stak
