Ernest Popescu

Much of the data centre industry is currently chasing single-tenant wholesale data centres. These are built to suit hyperscale demands, whilst demonstrating there is a large enterprise customer market that is currently underserved. 

Metrobloks is one company eager to fill this gap in the market. As an emerging data centre developer, the company seeks to bring urban metro infrastructure capacity and offer something more unique.

“I really wanted to create the data centre company that customers wish existed – that I as a former customer wished had existed when I was buying and procuring capacity for AWS and Facebook,” says Ernest Popescu, founder and CEO of Metrobloks.

The data centre industry is largely commoditised, with Metrobloks instead opting to move away from following the rest of the pack.

I’m passionate about the long-term creative thinking required to adapt and stay ahead of evolving customer requirements in a resource-constrained environment,” he says.

“In founding Metrobloks, I wanted to harness the invaluable experience of passionate industry experts who will buy, build and operate data centres with a relentless focus on reliability, efficiency, sustainability and customer obsession.”

Becoming a data centre thought leader

Having been in the data centre industry for some time, Ernest Popescu formerly worked at technology giant AWS, where he planned global data centre capacity and converted customer demand into servers, racks, and ultimately into the space, power, cooling and network connectivity required to meet AWS's demand signal. 

“That experience was really formative and allowed me to understand data centre development from a first principles perspective,” he shares. “I went on to manage the America's colocation team for AWS, evaluating and buying capacity from most of the third-party developers in the industry for both core and edge needs across all tier markets.”

Ernest then took over management of AWS America’s data centre development team, where it oversaw the build-to-suit programme and the greenfield land acquisition and development programme, managing a team of over 50 real estate transaction managers and technical business development managers, procuring, buying and developing over 10,000MW of capacity in the three years he was at the helm.

“At the time, that probably represented about 75% of AWS's global data centre infrastructure investment – it was an amazing responsibility and privilege,” he says. 

Uncovering market gaps

After AWS, Ernest joined Facebook (now Meta) and managed its global data centre development team. 

“This was at the time where Meta’s AI and machine learning needs started exploding and materialising, including all the water, sewer, power, environmental and site design planning responsibilities,” he shares.

“I left  Meta because I wanted to experience the industry from a develop and sell perspective, so I joined Iron Mountain Data Centres, where I built the organisation a pipeline of 2,000 MWs at various stages of development across the US and European markets.”

Taking his extensive experience with him, Ernest founded Metrobloks in May 2024 in the hope of building and operating data centres in urban, largely populated markets that currently have very little data centre infrastructure supply inventory.

“We want to democratise data centre capacity for everyone,” he explains. “It’s been an incredibly enriching ride so far. “As former customers ourselves, knowing what other customers are looking for gives us a unique almost unfair advantage. 

“We know we are on the right track when customers repeatedly and apologetically ask us if we understand that they “only” need 1MW or 0.5MW of capacity and we reassure them that we do understand and that they are who our product is targeting. The market response has been really rewarding and validating.”

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE. 

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