DC BLOX Expands Digital Infrastructure Across Southeast US
The digital infrastructure landscape in the United States has undergone rapid transformation in recent years, driven by surging demand for cloud computing, edge services and now AI workloads. While traditional data centre hubs like Northern Virginia, Dallas and Silicon Valley continue to dominate the national market, the southeastern US has emerged as a region with increasing strategic importance for digital infrastructure development.
Hyperscale providers are seeking to diversify their geographic footprint, bringing computing resources closer to growing population centres, while addressing power constraints and reducing latency.
Amid this rapid growth, DC BLOX has emerged as a key player in the southeastern digital infrastructure ecosystem, creating a comprehensive network of interconnected data centres, fibre networks and cable landing stations that serve enterprise, government and hyperscale clients across the US.
Founded 10 years ago, the company operates from its Atlanta headquarters but has strategically built facilities across the region, developing a unique approach to market expansion that prioritises community integration and relationship building with both local utilities and customers.
At the helm of this expansion is Jeff Uphues, CEO of DC BLOX, whose vision has guided the company from its early days with a single facility to its current position as a regional infrastructure provider with multiple facilities across six states. With a career spanning over three decades in communications infrastructure, Jeff brings extensive experience in network development, market expansion and strategic partnerships.
“I've been in the communications infrastructure business for essentially my entire career,” he says. “It evolved over the course of the last 35 years in various roles of responsibility, from working with major telecommunications companies to entrepreneurial ventures that allowed me to apply those learnings to build new organisations.”
DC BLOX builds trust through cultural pillars across markets
In an industry often defined by technical metrics like power density and connectivity specifications, DC BLOX has taken a different approach – placing equal emphasis on its organisational culture and values.
This culture, according to Jeff, follows a specific order of priority: “Employees first, customers second and investors third. If you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of your customers. If you take care of your customers, they’ll take care of the investors.”
The company has codified this approach through four specific cultural pillars that guide operations across its expanding footprint. These include transparency in all business dealings, trust-building both internally and with external stakeholders, teamwork across departments and facilities and tenacious execution on commitments.
“You end up building a great company,” Jeff says. “My leadership has evolved in continually protecting our vision and culture, and then adapting our mission as the company grows.”
This philosophy extends beyond client relationships to include deep partnerships with utilities and community organisations – a major factor in markets where power availability has become as important as physical space. “When you partner with utilities and communities, it creates a strong foundation for success, particularly with the current demands on power infrastructure,” he adds.
DC BLOX strategy prioritises Southeast market development approach
While Tier 1 data centre markets like Northern Virginia and Dallas have historically attracted the most investment and development, secondary markets across the southeast have become increasingly attractive alternatives. These locations offer lower land costs, available power and access to growing metropolitan populations, yet they present unique challenges including less established digital infrastructure ecosystems.
DC BLOX’s market entry strategy has been methodical, deliberately avoiding immediate competition in the largest metropolitan areas where established operators had already secured significant market share. “We’re headquartered in Atlanta, but initially focused on surrounding states: Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina,” says Jeff. “The largest city in the South is Atlanta, but we chose to target markets with less competition first, where we could build and refine our business processes.”
This approach – establishing footholds in smaller markets before tackling the region’s primary hub – has allowed DC BLOX to develop expertise and operational competencies while reducing competitive pressures.
Today, DC BLOX maintains its disciplined geographic focus rather than attempting global expansion, even as international data centre operations gain popularity among some competitors. “It would be easy to get distracted by opportunities in regions like Asia, but that’s not our strength,” Jeff says. “Our strength is investing deeply in the communities where we operate.”
Myrtle Beach cable landing station a pivotal milestone
Cable landing stations serve as critical infrastructure where submarine telecommunications cables connect to land-based networks, forming essential links in global internet infrastructure. Traditionally, these facilities have been concentrated in major coastal hubs like New York, New Jersey and Miami on the US east coast, leaving mid-Atlantic states without direct international connectivity.
A key turning point in DC BLOX’s evolution came with the development of a cable landing station in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: a project that opened doors to relationships with hyperscale clients while addressing a significant infrastructure gap in the region. Prior to this development, data traffic from southeastern states needed to travel to these distant connection points before reaching international destinations, adding latency and reducing network resilience.
“I never imagined we would build a data centre in a tourist destination like Myrtle Beach – it wasn’t on our initial list of target markets,” Jeff says. The opportunity emerged through collaborative planning with major technology companies seeking additional landing points for their submarine cable projects.
Jeff explains that DC BLOX worked closely with hyperscale companies – specifically Google and Meta – who were laying subsea cables that would connect at this location. The scale of the Myrtle Beach facility aligned with DC BLOX's established development model.
“The initial scale of a Myrtle Beach cable landing facility aligned to DC BLOX’s established development model however we had to reimagine what a hyperscale cable landing station could be to address the changing demands, capacity and scale of AI,” Jeff notes. “Ultimately, we created a facility that was similar in size to our other market deployments but incorporated the best of traditional cable landing stations and the flexibility of larger hyperscale facilities.”
Bill Thomson, DC BLOX VP of Marketing & Product Management explains the significance: “Most of the cable landing stations on the eastern seaboard were concentrated in the northeast or Florida, leaving nothing in the mid-Atlantic area. This project finally brought international subsea connectivity to a rapidly growing region.”
This strategic infrastructure investment created demand for additional connectivity solutions. “Our customers needed a way to connect to Atlanta – the southeast's connectivity hub – with high-capacity, dark fibre networks. There was no east-west route across the region,” Bill says.
Responding to this need, DC BLOX developed substantial terrestrial fibre infrastructure to connect these previously isolated connectivity points.
“We built what's now considered the dark fiber backbone of the southeast, and the region’s fibre connection to the world,” Bill adds.
The company operates and is developing new facilities across the southeastern US, with large hyperscale campuses in Atlanta and regional Edge compute locations in Chattanooga, Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery, N. Augusta, Greenville, Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Richmond, with additional expansions planned. This distributed footprint creates a connected ecosystem rather than isolated data centre sites.
“DC BLOX’s footprint is unlike any other data centre operator in the southeast,” Jeff claims. “We’ve made a significant impact by improving both network capacity and data centre infrastructure across multiple southeastern markets.”
AI drives increased digital infrastructure demand
The rise of AI has created substantial demand for data centre capacity and connectivity, something DC BLOX has positioned itself to capitalise on.
“AI is driving every aspect of infrastructure demand,” says Jeff. “From large language models (LLMs) that companies are developing to edge inference model deployments – both require robust facilities and connectivity.”
This evolution has changed customer requirements dramatically. “Customers who previously needed 10 megawatts now require 100 megawatts. This growth, driven by AI, has required us to scale our capabilities substantially,” Jeff explains.
The company’s original plans for the Atlanta market shifted in response to these changing needs. “We didn’t enter Atlanta planning to sell 120-megawatt campuses to single customers. We expected gradual growth over time, but then the industry evolved rapidly as AI created unprecedented demand.”
Bill notes that fibre networks are equally critical to support AI infrastructure. “Bringing infrastructure closer to end users is essential, particularly for applications requiring quick response times and low latency. As real-time applications grow, cloud infrastructure, AI systems and high-capacity networks need to be regionally deployed.”
The company has observed significant increases in fibre requirements. “We started with 432-count fibre cables in our networks. Then customers requested 864-count, and now we’re seeing demands for 1,728-count fibre,” Jeff says. “The requirements for data transport between core facilities, edge facilities and entrance points is growing exponentially.”
Bill adds context to these technology demands: “Consumer expectations have fundamentally changed. When people can get products ordered in the morning delivered the same day, they expect similar responsiveness from their banks, healthcare providers and other services. This is driving widespread digital transformation across sectors.”
DC BLOX partners with Evans and JCI for project execution
The data centre construction sector faces unprecedented constraints as AI continues to drive demand. As a result, strategic partnerships remain central to DC BLOX’s ability to deliver projects on schedule. The company has developed long-term relationships with firms like Evans General Contractors and Johnson Controls (JCI) to maintain construction velocity and equipment availability.
“We’re not a general contractor construction company, so we need strategic execution partnerships,” Jeff explains. “Evans was key for several reasons: they understand the southeast market exceptionally well and have established relationships with local authorities and contractors throughout the region.”
This regional familiarity provides advantages in navigating municipal permitting processes, local building codes and workforce availability – factors that can significantly impact project timelines. Evans General Contractors has built a reputation for data centre expertise and its team has executed critical data centre infrastructure projects for the largest global hyperscale clients over the past decade, allowing DC BLOX to leverage their domain knowledge across multiple facilities.
These relationships build on shared values and previous working relationships rather than transactional vendor arrangements. “Our partnership with Evans is built on shared capabilities, geographic proximity and aligned values – that’s what makes the relationship successful,” says Jeff.
Equipment supply chain challenges have similarly necessitated strategic partnerships with infrastructure providers. While many data centre operators work with multiple suppliers, DC BLOX has developed a deeper relationship with JCI to ensure equipment availability and technical consistency across its facilities.
“JCI offers a diverse product portfolio that supports our evolving facility designs and requirements,” Jeff notes. This product diversity becomes particularly important as DC BLOX develops facilities ranging from edge deployments to hyperscale campuses, each requiring appropriately scaled infrastructure solutions. “We need partners who can support our design, engineering and deployment needs across different facility scales,” he adds.
DC BLOX maps future growth in edge and hyperscale infrastructure
Looking to the future, DC BLOX plans continued expansion across the region, with particular focus on both edge facilities and hyperscale campuses.
“We’ll continue investing in southeastern markets while gradually expanding our regional footprint,” Jeff says. “Our edge facilities increasingly serve as connectivity centres for hyperscale companies and can evolve into inference capability nodes supporting AI applications.”
The company also plans campus-style developments. “We have facilities on both the east and west sides of Atlanta that are 100-plus megawatt sites each. We'll continue building campus environments with multiple facilities in close proximity to our core facilities.”
Bill believes the industry remains in early stages of AI infrastructure development: “If AI were the Internet, we’d be back in 1998. We’re just getting started – even our customers are still figuring out their AI infrastructure requirements.”
This evolution creates both challenges and opportunities. “Many companies have paused to reassess their AI infrastructure strategy because the technology is evolving so rapidly,” Bill adds. “From advances in GPU capacity to new cooling technologies – the next generation of solutions is still being developed.”
Regardless of how the technology evolves, Jeff emphasises that the company’s core values will remain constant: “As DC BLOX continues to grow, we’ll maintain the values that built our company. We design, develop and operate excellent data centres, but we do so with a foundation of transparency and trust with our customers, employees and partners.
“Culture and trust are ultimately what DC BLOX builds.”