en.Wedoany.com Reported - The St. Petersburg Investment Committee announced the construction of two data centers in the Moskovsky and Vyborg districts of St. Petersburg.
This month, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Vice Governor of St. Petersburg Nikolai Linchenko signed two letters of intent with Dmitry Sharov, General Director of data centers Perspektiva and Spb (Russian: ЦОД Перспектива and ЦОД Спб).
The announcement did not disclose full details of the planned facilities, but local media reported that the two data centers will have a total capacity of 22 MW, with the Vyborg site accounting for 15 MW, potentially becoming operational in early 2028. These facilities will provide high-quality IT infrastructure for small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as large industrial and cross-industry companies.
The Investment Committee stated: "This project aims to improve the quality of cloud storage services, create more opportunities to attract investment for business development, enhance corporate economic efficiency and sales volumes, and increase tax revenues."
Dmitry Sharov leads Data Center Expert, a data center design and construction company founded in 2006. According to its website, the company has participated in multiple projects for Russian hosting company Datahouse (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinburg) and other companies, including SafeHarbor in Moscow.
The new facilities in St. Petersburg are progressing against the backdrop of a struggling Russian data center market. Forbes Russia, citing data from TechExpo and the Russian Federal Property Management Agency (PKR), reported that approximately 38 data center construction projects in Russia have been suspended over the past three years, with a total value of about 128.6 billion rubles ($2.2 billion). During the same period, 128 data center projects were announced, valued at approximately 1 trillion rubles ($13.28 billion), meaning nearly one-third of the projects have stalled. This is despite the fact that there is almost no available idle data center capacity for clients in Russia, particularly in Moscow.
About 42 projects are under construction, involving facilities from companies such as Yandex, Sber, DataPro, AFK Sistema, Monarch Group, Goznak, and VKontakte. According to Forbes, these projects (many financed through debt and private investment) are vulnerable to high capital costs, rising construction and utility expenses, difficulties in equipment supply, and challenges in grid connection. Projects from companies like Alcon, Wildberries, and Rosenergoatom have stalled.
Daniil Novitsky, CEO of PKR, stated: "The data center market is currently in a screening phase. Demand for computing power is growing, especially against the backdrop of cloud computing and artificial intelligence development. For commercial projects, financing costs, energy access, and the ability to expand facilities without overburdening project economics are decisive factors." Filipp Vratskikh, CEO of TechExpo, added: "Crises are always times to freeze projects and acquire idle assets at low prices." He told Forbes that many companies are now "eager to quickly offload" projects they have started to recover potential losses.
C.News reported earlier this year that grid operators around Moscow have informed data center developers that no grid capacity will be available for new data centers until at least 2028 (or even later). In recent years, the addition of new available data center capacity in Russia has significantly slowed, as has the number of new projects under development.
Russian data center company IXcellerate has gained new cloud clients. The company recently announced that MT Cloud, a cloud provider operated by Movetel, has expanded its server capacity and deployed a new cluster within IXcellerate's data center. According to both companies, MT Cloud has been a client of IXcellerate for "several years," with rack power typically ranging from 10 to 12 kW at IXcellerate's Moscow North and South campuses.
Timur Chubarin, CEO of MT Cloud, stated: "As a professional cloud provider, infrastructure supports the complex architectural setups we handle. Our projects rely on hybrid and distributed models, where elasticity, stable performance under high loads, and the ability to scale without rebuilding are critical. Adding a second independent IXcellerate site allows us to run backup scenarios, balance mission-critical workloads, and maintain overall platform reliability."
IXcellerate was founded by Guy Willner in 2011 and first activated its facilities at the Moscow North campus around 2013. Today, IXcellerate operates five data centers across two campuses. The company acquired land for a third Moscow campus last year: the 130 MW site could launch in 2027. Andrei Aksenov, CEO of IXcellerate, added: "All IXcellerate data centers are designed as independent facilities, enabling clients to build geographically distributed and fully redundant IT systems. This is especially important for cloud providers handling high-load services and mission-critical applications. We support their digital growth, removing infrastructure constraints that could hinder them."
IXcellerate also recently announced that Russian IT company ATOL has migrated its infrastructure to IXcellerate's facilities. ATOL has deployed racks at IXcellerate's MOS5 data center in the Moscow South campus and reserved additional capacity for future expansion.
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