CoreWeave dropped $322 million to gain a major foothold in New Jersey’s suburban data center scene, acquiring a portion of the Northeast Science and Technology Center from Onyx Equities and Machine Investment Group.
The sale includes a 281,000-square-foot facility at 2000 Galloping Hill Road in Kenilworth and 27 adjacent acres, where CoreWeave is expected to build another 100 megawatts of capacity, Real Estate NJ reported. The site is part of a 108-acre, 2-million-square-foot former Merck campus that Onyx and MIG have spent the past two years repositioning as a high-powered research and innovation hub.
Onyx and MIG bought the campus from Merck in 2022 for $187.5 million and have since inked leases with tenants including Revlon and NJIT. They still control over 2 million square feet of space on the property.
Nvidia-backed CoreWeave, which began leasing the facility in October and pledged $1.2 billion to transform it into its first New Jersey data center, specializes in AI infrastructure.
The firm’s lease of the site, known as 11 NEST, set the stage for the acquisition and signals CoreWeave’s growing appetite for strategically located, power-rich properties.
It’s the latest example of capital flooding into suburban campuses with serious infrastructure — especially those equipped for fast deployment of AI workloads.
A Newmark team including Doug Harmon, Josh King and Brent Mayo arranged the deal. The brokerage cited surging demand for entitled land with near-term access to power. The Kenilworth site checks boxes with assets like a 50-megawatt substation, cogeneration and chiller plants and a central boiler facility.
As the AI boom continues, the need for data centers continues to proliferate. While there are certain pockets of the nation where these facilities are popping up most often — northern Virginia, for example — no part of the country is immune from their development.
In terms of total inventory, New Jersey was the fourth-largest data center market in the nation at the end of last year, according to a report from CommercialCafe.
Read more
Real estate is betting big on data centers
Prologis to acquire site of $17B data center project
Northern VA, Dallas rank among top data center hubs
