What Black Vault is.
Platform
STAND 08/2026
A standardised engineering system, repeatable on a new site. Not a building type and not a fund: a defined set of layers, each with a figure and a document behind it, that gets assembled the same way every time.
01 · The definitionFive things, and none of them optional.
Take any one of the five away and the thing that remains has a name already: a shed, a power project, a colocation hall, a service contract, a legal opinion. Black Vault is the case where all five are held by one party and designed against each other from the first day.
- PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
- ENERGY
- COMPUTE ENVIRONMENT
- OPERATING CONTROL
- JURISDICTION
BLACK VAULT
Schematic, not a building. The gold outline on the ground is the jurisdiction the other four sit inside, which is why it is drawn as the ground rather than as a fifth box.
02 · The infrastructure stackAI is visible at the top. The constraints sit underneath.
Eight layers. The three above the line are our tenants’ business; the five below are ours. Scarcity runs the other way from attention: the deeper a layer, the longer it takes to build and the fewer people can build it at all.
The deepest layer is the legal one.
Proof
Jurisdiction · Black Vault Blankenburg GmbH · registered German project company.
- ·GI industrial zoning · BauNVO §9
- ·Designed toward KRITIS and NIS2, a pathway, not a certificate
- ·German building, German and EU law, auditable to the room
Applications
assistants, agents, products
Not built here. The layer everyone already sees.
Models
training and inference
Not built here. This is our tenants' business.
Compute
accelerators and their environment
We build the environment. We do not own the chips.
Signal
fibre, routing, exchange
Frankfurt connectivity · multi-route by design · route in development.
- · Multi-route by design · diverse entry to the campus
- · Carrier procurement · IN PROCESS
- · Meet-me room planned · cross-connect model to be specified
Thermal
cooling, heat rejection, recovery
Source water at 10–12 °C, coupled to closed campus and rack loops · OFFICIAL DATA.
- · Mine water 10–12 °C · 8,182 m³/day · OFFICIAL DATA
- · Source circuit open · all water returned · designed to avoid potable water
- · Heat export potential up to 35 MWth · DESIGN BASIS
Energy
generation, storage, grid
110 kV / 60 MW grid application filed 03/2026.
- · Quedlinburg: 1 MW connected today · 2 MVA transformer · EXISTING
- · 2.33 MWh storage at 1.05 MW · 450 kW photovoltaics · EXISTING
- · Own substation and CHP on site · DESIGN BASIS
Physical base
land, geology, structure
GI-zoned industrial land on Harz bedrock.
- · GI industrial zoning · BauNVO §9, the federal land-use ordinance · EXISTING
- · Harz basement rock · 400 million years
- · 232–254 m above sea level · MEASURED
Jurisdiction
law, ownership, control
Black Vault Blankenburg GmbH · registered German project company.
- · GI industrial zoning · BauNVO §9
- · Designed toward KRITIS and NIS2, a pathway, not a certificate
- · German building, German and EU law, auditable to the room
visible · abundant ↓ scarce · slowest to build
Black Vault the five layers below compute
03 · RepeatabilityThe same six standards, in the same order, on new ground.
Repeatability is a property of the standards below.
Repeat at another location
- 01
Site standard
Nine gates, checked before anything is drawn.
Quedlinburg · the Cube
Blankenburg
GI · BauNVO §9
Quedlinburg · the Cube
Blankenburg
Both outlines are official ALKIS geometry on official orthophotos, drawn at each site’s own scale, so read the bars · © GeoBasis-DE / LVermGeo ST 2026. - 02
Energy standard
Written network position first, own generation second, storage sized to a purpose third. In that order, because the first one can end the project.
Quedlinburg · the Cube
1 MW
Blankenburg
Quedlinburg · the Cube
Blankenburg
The same cabinet, three months apart: storage is not specified per site, the unit is the same and only the number of them changes. - 03
Thermal standard
A closed loop on a known source temperature, and a named offtaker for the waste heat.
Quedlinburg · the Cube
Offtaker identified – Stadtwerke Quedlinburg, 19 m from the parcel. Nothing contracted.Blankenburg
- 04
Compute standard
Density class, containment, routes and rack count counted off the drawing. The environment is specified; the accelerators are the tenant’s.
Quedlinburg · the Cube
184
Blankenburg
50 MW IT
- 05
Security standard
One entrance, separated fibre routes, detection and patrol, no permanent workplace inside a machine room.
Quedlinburg · the Cube
Not specified yetBlankenburg
Not specified yet - 06
Operating standard
Robot-assisted, remotely supervised, with the headcount stated as a number rather than described as lean.
Quedlinburg · the Cube
Not specified yetBlankenburg
120+
04 · Deployment scalesOne system. Three formats.
Not a ladder. None of the three is a step toward another, and each is deployed where its own conditions are met.
The pipeline
05 · Twelve ElementsThe platform is owned by the company that funds it.
12 Elements Ltd pays for every project’s engineering off its own balance sheet before external capital enters, and keeps client capital out of the holding entirely. The structure, the people and the register number are on the company page.
- 01Land
- 02Water
- 03Energy
- 04Structure
- 05Cooling
- 06Heat
- 07Signal
- 08Compute
- 09Security
- 10Control
- 11Jurisdiction
- 12Time
06 · Architectural DNAEleven standards that make two buildings recognisably one system.
A repeatable system is repeatable physically or not at all. These are the decisions taken once, at platform level, so that a new site inherits them instead of re-arguing them.
Building family · Façade · Roof · Fenestration · Landscape · Materials · Lighting · Security integration · Service access · Wayfinding · Expandability
- 01
Building family
One volumetric language: a closed mass, a legible entrance, no decorative massing.
- 02
Façade
Dark, matte, non-reflective. The blackness comes from depth and low reflection, never from tint.
- 03
Roof
A working surface. Generation and rejection compete for it, and generation wins where the yield is real.
- 04
Fenestration
Openings where people are, none where machines are. The window line tells you what is behind it.
- 05
Landscape
Open ground kept open. Planting is native and unwatered, and the ground plane stays permeable.
- 06
Materials
Concrete, steel and glass, chosen so that weathering is acceptable. Where a surface needs protection, the protection is specified with it.
- 07
Lighting
Downward, warm, shielded. A data centre that lights the sky loses the argument in a small town.
- 08
Security integration
The perimeter is part of the architecture.
- 09
Service access
Deliveries, plant and waste on their own route, never crossing the visitor route.
- 10
Wayfinding
One typeface, one arrow, one colour for the gold. A visitor finds the way without being escorted.
- 11
Expandability
Future phases are assumed from the first drawing. Services arrive on one side, so the next unit is added without touching what is already running.
07 · Site qualificationNine gates, before a line is drawn.
A location that fails the standard does not become a Black Vault.
Land · Zoning · Power · Cooling source · Fibre · Heat sink · Jurisdiction · Expansion · Security perimeter
08 · Why Germany · Harz · GraniteWhy this country, this region, this rock.
For Black Vault, jurisdiction is not a constraint around the infrastructure. It is part of the infrastructure.
Marginalia
Mies van der Rohe set the Neue Nationalgalerie on a granite podium, with a steel roof floating above it. The podium is permanent; the hall beneath can be re-planned indefinitely, and has been. It is the same order this platform is built in: settle the ground first, then let the machine on top of it be allowed to change.
Germany
Germany is the largest economy in the European Union and the one that regulates data centres hardest. That is not a cost we put up with. It is most of the reason we are here.
Three bodies of law decide what this ground is worth. The DSGVO settles what may be done with data held on it. The EU AI Act settles what may be built on top of it. And the US CLOUD Act, which compels American providers to produce data wherever in the world it happens to sit, binds providers subject to US jurisdiction, which is why the operating entity and the law over it are German.
A tenant who needs that last sentence to be true cannot get it from a region on somebody’s cloud map. They can get it from an address.
The Harz
The Harz has been an industrial landscape for a thousand years. The mines here produced water engineering that is now UNESCO World Heritage: the Oberharzer Wasserregal, a system of ponds, ditches and tunnels cut to move water to where the work was, described by Agricola in 1556 and still holding water today. The region has always known how to run heavy plant, and the trades that maintain it never left.
It is also not Frankfurt. In the clusters everyone can name, grid capacity is contested and the queue is measured in years. Here the constraint is a different one: the land is industrial and available, the connection is a conversation with a single network operator, and the town has a reason of its own to want the waste heat.
Granite
Granite is the material the Harz is made of, and there is granite under this parcel. The land seller confirmed it. We have not drilled it ourselves, so it stands as a third-party indication rather than as survey, and it moves to MEASURED the day a ground investigation says so.
It matters for more than foundations. A quantum machine is not beaten by heat or by power. It is beaten by vibration, and vibration is a property of the ground you chose. Silence cannot be retrofitted: a site on a monolithic massif has a floor that a site on made ground cannot buy later at any price. That is the whole basis of the reserved zone, and it is a decision about geology rather than about equipment.
Almost everything in a data centre has a replacement date. Accelerators are replaced in three to five years. Cooling plant is replaced in fifteen. The roof is replaced. What does not get replaced is the ground, the connection, the water and the law – and all four are chosen once, at the beginning, by people who will not be in the room when the consequences arrive.
Some decisions you make for now. Some decisions you make for forever. Granite is a forever decision.
Three of these reach the building directly. The CLOUD Act binds providers subject to US jurisdiction, which is why the operating entity, the site and the law over them are German – the architecture is designed to reduce exposure to extraterritorial access regimes rather than to assert immunity from them.
Notes
- 19,497 m² – VERIFIED EXISTING (OFFICIAL DATA) · effective 07/2026 · source: Cadastral data · verified 29.07.2026
- 2GI · BauNVO §9 – VERIFIED EXISTING (EXISTING) · effective 08/2026 · source: Project data sheet · verified 06.08.2026
- 31 MW – VERIFIED EXISTING (EXISTING) · effective 08/2026 · source: Project data sheet · verified 06.08.2026
- 4110 kV / 60 MW – SUBMITTED / IN PROCESS (SUBMITTED) · effective 03/2026 · source: Grid connection application · verified 06.08.2026
- 5up to 35 MWth – DESIGN BASIS (DESIGN BASIS) · effective 06/2026 · source: Heat concept · verified 06.08.2026
- 6184 – DESIGN BASIS (CALCULATED) · effective 08/2026 · source: Technical concept · verified 15.08.2026
- 750 MW IT – DESIGN BASIS (DESIGN BASIS) · effective 06/2026 · source: Project data sheet · verified 06.08.2026
- 8120+ – LONG-TERM TARGET (TARGET) · effective 08/2026 · source: Project data sheet · verified 06.08.2026
