eBay May Build Reno Data Center Beside Leased Space at Switch SuperNap

eBay is considering a $230 million investment in its own data center build near Reno, Nevada, in addition to the space its servers will occupy in the multi-tenant data center Las Vegas-based Switch is building in the area.

“This potential expansion is separate from eBay’s decision to be an anchor tenant at Switch’s new facility in the Reno area,” company spokesman Ryan Moore wrote in in an email. “We are also considering building an eBay-owned facility within that same Switch campus.”

Like other major web-scale data center operators, the online auction giant, which recently separated from its former sister company PayPal, uses a mix of leased and owned data centers. eBay occupies a huge amount of space across several buildings on Switch’s SuperNap data center campus in Las Vegas, but it has also designed and built its own data centers in Utah and Arizona.

Switch will be involved in the eBay-owned data center build in Reno if the internet company goes ahead with the plan. The data center provider will essentially build something similar to a powered shell on its campus, which eBay will fill with its own infrastructure, Switch CEO Rob Roy said.

Rendering of the planned Switch Tahoe Reno SuperNap data center campus (Image: Switch)

Switch expects to invest about $1 billion in its SuperNap Tahoe Reno campus. The company said it will be the world’s largest data center, providing 150 MW of power and 82,000 tons of cooling capacity.

Until recently Reno was known primarily for its casinos – a smaller-scale version of Las Vegas – but over the past two years the city has attracted some big-name technology companies. With Switch building a massive multi-tenant data center campus there, more high-tech firms are likely to come to town.

The Switch campus is neighboring a construction site for a massive Tesla battery plant, which will reportedly also include a data center. Also in the vicinity is a quickly growing Apple data center campus.