TeraWulf Deploys $290m AI Data Centre Tech with Schneider

Schneider Electric and Motivair by Schneider Electric have delivered more than US$290m in AI infrastructure for TeraWulf’s rapidly growing Lake Mariner data campus on the shores of Lake Ontario in Barker, New York. 

The once-coal-powered site, built in 1984 and retired in 2020, previously hosted rows of bitcoin mining racks. 

Today, it is being transformed into an AI high-performance computing campus with five halls designed for 3GW of capacity, purpose-built to handle HPC, cloud and AI workloads.

Speeding up a 36-month build 

At the core of the build are liquid cooling solutions from Motivair and integrated power infrastructure from Schneider Electric, paired to optimise energy consumption and performance at scale. 

The collaboration underpins TeraWulf’s push into high-demand AI data centres by marrying top-tier engineering with innovative cooling and advanced power systems.

The pace of construction has been as notable as the technology. 

TeraWulf set an aggressive 12-month timeline to convert the site into a series of AI-focused data centres – an undertaking that typically spans about 36 months. 

To meet that acceleration, TeraWulf leaned on detailed technical design and engineering guidance to deploy a specialised hardware stack that includes Schneider Electric Galaxy VX Uninterruptible Power Supply systems, Galaxy Lithium-ion Battery Systems, and NetShelter Racks and Enclosures. On the cooling side, Motivair supplied Coolant Distribution Units, In-Rack Manifolds and ChilledDoors to support dense, heat-intensive compute.

Sean Farrell, TeraWulf’s Chief Operations Officer, has overseen multiple buildings going up in less than a year, a feat he says requires engineering on the fly and round-the-clock effort. 

About 1,600 people – from the local region and as far afield as Texas, Florida, California and Washington – are engaged across structural, electrical and mechanical disciplines, as well as the trades. 

The CB-4 hall alone spans 330,000 square feet, underscoring the scale and complexity of what’s being delivered. 

Additional builds are slated to begin in Kentucky, western New York and Texas, with the advantage of replicating a proven reference design.

“Kentucky’s going to be easier to build than the data halls here because they’ll replicate that reference design,” said Gary Lamora, VP of Strategic Accounts at Schneider Electric. “There’s a lot of lessons learned when you build that scale.

“It is an arms race to compute today and who can bring that compute to market the fastest.”

The anatomy of an AI factory 

According to Gary and Sean, the fundamentals for an AI factory start with the land and its grid interconnectivity, paired with the ability to deliver on time and on budget – contingent on availability of skilled labour, from electrical and mechanical contractors to specialised trades. 

“This is what it takes to drive data centre building at scale,” Gary said.

Lake Mariner benefits from long-term lead commitments from tenants Core42 and Fluidstack (backed by Google). 

The campus draws power from a New York regional grid that is 89% zero-carbon and offers substantial surplus capacity to support HPC and AI workloads. 

“The biggest demand for a data centre is power,” Sean said. “We used our expertise in the power space to work with grid operators to pull a large flow from the grid to power a data centre.”

A tour of the site highlighted the contrast between the campus’ past and future. 

One of the first bitcoin mining buildings – long and narrow, outfitted with rows of approximately 15,000 small air-cooled computers – helped illustrate why AI HPC requires a different architectural approach. 

Square-shaped buildings enable optimal airflow management and accommodate the heavy fluid-piping infrastructure essential for high-density liquid cooling.

To keep the advanced systems running efficiently, Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT Data Center Expert software is integrated across the campus for monitoring and digital intelligence. 

The platform provides visibility into performance and power usage, supporting uptime, efficiency and rapid scaling as new halls and tenants come online.

From accelerated timelines to high-efficiency cooling and grid-scale power integration, the Lake Mariner transformation underscores how fast-growing AI demand is reshaping data centre design and delivery. 

With lessons learned at Barker informing upcoming sites in Kentucky, western New York and Texas, TeraWulf, Schneider Electric and Motivair are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in large-scale AI infrastructure – at record speed.