Why Digital Realty Trust’s $10B Bet on Japan Could Flip the Data Center Market Overnight—And What It Means for Your Investments

Digital Realty Trust plans to invest an additional $10 billion in Japanese data centers over the next 10 years. That is a decade-long bet that the world’s appetite for computing power, especially for AI, is not going anywhere.

The commitment is described as the company’s largest to the Asian market to date. It is also designed to nearly quadruple Digital Realty’s data center capacity in Japan.

Where the $10 billion is going

The money will flow through MC Digital Realty, a joint venture Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) runs with Mitsubishi Corporation. The two companies split the venture 50/50 and launched it in 2017.

Today, Digital Realty operates eight sites in Japan with approximately 170 MW of live IT capacity. IT capacity measures how much power the servers inside a building can actually draw, which is the real yardstick for data center size.

The expansion is centered on the Tokyo and Osaka regions, where several projects are already in motion. The headline project is KIX15, a new facility near Osaka.

KIX15 broke ground on October 7, 2026. It is designed for 24 MW of capacity and is set to begin operations in Q4 2028.

The facility will use hybrid air and liquid cooling and is built specifically for high-density AI infrastructure. Its target customers are hyperscalers and cloud service providers.

Once KIX15 is finished, the MC Digital Realty portfolio is expected to reach 10 facilities. Total IT capacity would land at roughly 220 MW.

The AI-ready playbook

The spending plan builds on a facility that already opened. NRT14 came online in April 2026 as one of Japan’s early NVIDIA DGX-Ready data centers.

DGX-Ready is NVIDIA’s certification for sites capable of hosting its high-end AI computing systems.

NRT14 supports 150 kW per rack.

The company has also paired its high-performance push with renewable energy initiatives.

Why Japan, and why now

The investment underscores how central Japan has become to Digital Realty’s Asia-Pacific growth strategy. Tokyo and Osaka are the country’s two dominant data center hubs, and both sit at the heart of the current expansion.

The timing is notable. The commitment reflects sustained demand for computing capacity to support AI workloads, even as enthusiasm for AI investment has cooled in some broader markets.

Data center construction runs on long timelines. KIX15 alone takes roughly two years from groundbreaking to opening, so a 10-year commitment is effectively a vote of confidence in demand well into the 2030s.

What this means

For Digital Realty, the plan would position the company as one of the largest data center operators in Japan.

A $10 billion commitment spread over 10 years also gives the company room to adjust pace. The near-term markers to watch are concrete: whether KIX15 stays on track for its Q4 2028 opening, and how quickly NRT14’s high-density capacity gets leased.

For Japan, the plan adds to a growing base of AI-capable infrastructure in its two largest metro regions. Moving from 170 MW today toward a footprint nearly four times larger would make Digital Realty and Mitsubishi a major supplier of the computing backbone that Japanese and global tech companies rely on.