Vapor IO has spent the past several years talking up its vision for what it calls the Kinetic Grid (formerly Kinetic Edge), a network of mini data centers located in metro regions throughout the U.S. It initially launched in six markets to prove out its business model and technical capabilities. Now, the company says it's ready to light up its service in more than two dozen additional markets.
Matthew Trifiro, Vapor IO’s CMO, told Fierce there aren’t yet any of its data centers live in the new markets, but the company has done all the necessary prep and permitting work to install them quickly once customers place orders for those locations. Specifically, he said its mini 20-kilowatt data centers can be up and running within 90 days.
That timeline includes 1-5 days for the data center itself to be shipped to the proper site plus some buffer time for any supply chain hiccups. Once the data center box arrives, it can be installed within 3-6 hours, he said.
In addition to the six cities where its data centers are already live – Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Pittsburg and Dallas – an additional 26 markets stand deployment-ready. Work is underway to make an additional four markets ready for deployments.
Trifiro pitched Vapor IO’s infrastructure as appealing to cloud hyperscalers as well as fixed and mobile providers who are trying to push services and computing closer to users. He added its ability to spin up new locations quickly offers an economic and time-to-market advantage.
“In some of these markets, if Amazon or Google wants to put down a data center, it’s three years to get a permit. And we’ve got it already,” Trifiro said. “The fact that we invested in this niche almost architecture and all of the work required to get it to the point where we can do a just in time deployment and the uniform deployment model, it’s a pretty attractive offering.”
It’s also about performance, he said. As enterprises move away from on-premises deployments, the Kinetic Grid can bridge the middle mile gap between regional cloud zones and customer locations to deliver latency and cost benefits. In addition to its smaller 20-kilowatt data centers, Vapor IO also offers 160-kilowatt and 180-kilowatt options.
To date, Vapor IO has raised over $100 million to tackle its Kinetic Grid buildout. Trifiro hinted that additional fundraising is in progress to fuel the next stage of construction, though didn’t provide any details.
New deployment-ready markets include: Birmingham, Boston-Worcester, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cincinnati/Dayton, Cleveland, Columbus, Connecticut, Denver, Fort, Myers, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, Orlando, Philadelphia, Providence, Raleigh, Rochester, San, Antonio, Seattle, Syracuse, Tampa and Washington DC-Baltimore.
This story has been updated to include Los Angeles in the deployment-ready market list and clarify that the company has raised more than $100 million.