Innovation Labs Expand AI Infrastructure Validation

Digital Realty has expanded its Digital Realty Innovation Lab (DRIL) network beyond the United States, establishing new facilities in Singapore, Japan and London. The expansion follows the launch of the inaugural DRIL site in Northern Virginia in September 2025 and is intended to provide real-world testing environments for AI and hybrid cloud deployments before production-scale rollout.

Supporting AI and Hybrid Cloud Readiness
As AI adoption accelerates, infrastructure validation has become a critical step between pilot projects and production deployment. The new DRIL locations provide controlled environments where enterprises and partners can deploy their own workloads or use pre-configured infrastructure to test performance, interoperability and scalability.

The facilities are designed to support high-density colocation and advanced cooling configurations required for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. Deployments of up to 150 kW per cabinet are supported, enabling validation of GPU-intensive applications and large-scale AI training or inference workloads.

Energy and cooling-aware testing capabilities allow enterprises to assess power consumption, thermal performance and efficiency trade-offs before full-scale investment. This approach reduces deployment risk and provides measurable insight into operational requirements.

Regional Focus: Singapore, Japan and the UK
The Singapore DRIL is positioned as a regional digital innovation hub, connecting local enterprises, research institutions and global technology providers. It enables development and validation of AI and hybrid cloud architectures within Southeast Asia’s growing digital infrastructure ecosystem.

In Japan, the DRIL will operate within the NRT12 data center in the Greater Tokyo area. The site includes 20 racks equipped with direct liquid cooling (DLC), supporting high-power-density AI and HPC applications. Liquid cooling infrastructure is increasingly relevant for advanced accelerators that exceed the limits of traditional air-cooled systems.

The London DRIL will provide UK-based enterprises and partners with a dedicated test environment for validating AI and hybrid cloud deployments prior to production rollout. The facility supports latency testing and cross-location validation to ensure performance consistency across distributed environments.

All three new locations are expected to be available for customer and partner use this year.

Interconnection and Orchestration Capabilities
Each DRIL integrates with ServiceFabric, Digital Realty’s global interconnection and orchestration platform. This enables direct connectivity to multiple cloud and network providers, supporting hybrid cloud validation and workload mobility.

Customers can test AI workload orchestration through the Private AI Exchange (AIPx), allowing secure, low-latency integration across distributed environments. Latency testing across multiple sites and cloud destinations helps enterprises validate performance requirements for geographically distributed AI deployments.

The DRIL framework is aligned with Digital Realty’s Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx) methodology, which standardizes deployment models across global sites. This consistency supports repeatable infrastructure validation and reduces complexity when scaling from pilot environments to production.

Ecosystem and Industry Context
The global DRIL network supports collaboration with technology partners including AMD, Cisco and Lenovo, focusing on AI infrastructure and hybrid cloud architecture development. By combining high-density colocation, advanced cooling, interconnection services and orchestration capabilities, the expanded DRIL network provides a structured validation pathway for enterprises transitioning from AI experimentation to scalable production environments.