As the Edge continues to develop across the United States, there is an oft-overlooked city: 134 million people in a 500-mile radius across the U.S. and Canada, plenty of existing industrial power capacity, a rapidly changing portfolio of local industries, and numerous incentives for locating there. What is this intriguing location? Detroit!
For more than a century, Detroit and the automotive industry have been synonymous, and now the city is an attractive location for back-end and regional deployments, particularly as new clients develop throughout the city and the state of Michigan. Detroit, over the past few years, has become a draw for multinational companies and tech innovators. In addition, its fast-growing investor community, venture capital firms, and angel investors have spurred a thriving incubator for entrepreneurs and startups. With this burgeoning diverse economy, Detroit’s ecosystem is not just for the automotive industry but also home to industries such as healthcare, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and tech.
Advisory firm Startup Genome ranked Detroit as the top emerging ecosystem globally for startups, accounting for overall company performance, funding availability, market reach, and local talent and experience. Detroit has long been home to a strong 
engineering culture, and one that diversifies rapidly as the automotive supply chain shifts from decades of internal combustion engine production to electric vehicles, with a smattering of self-driving and other technologies creating their own vendor relationships. Research and development of all these technologies will continue to require significant amounts of scalable compute power, particularly for machine learning for design, scenario modeling and more.
This compute can be housed locally in Detroit, mainly thanks to the low cost and availability of land and power, appealing to both those requiring sizable amounts of cloud platform services and bare metal deployments. The state is also home to major universities, including Michigan State, University of Michigan, Michigan Tech University, and Wayne State University, providing the region with a strong tech talent pool with skilled engineering and computer science graduates. And combined with the cross-industry collaboration, Detroit has enabled a workforce that innovates, creates, develops, and produces.
Primed for Business & Innovation
Michigan offers full exemptions on sales and use taxes on data center equipment, and these benefits are currently scheduled through 2035 for all new and expanding entrants. In addition, an additional $1.4 billion incentive package was approved for local business expansion, taking effect in 2024 and making funding available for large-scale projects. State officials continue to search for new methods of attracting further business, with bipartisan consensus pushing investment forward. With its diversified economy, growing tech industry, and increasing investment in infrastructure, Detroit is becoming an ideal location for data storage and processing and an attractive destination for enterprises, tech, and cloud companies. As the greater Detroit metro area invests in infrastructure, promotes entrepreneurship, and fosters innovation, the tech industry will continue to thrive and attract even more companies and talent. Through this transformation comes further innovation, entrepreneurship, and a promising outlook.
Whether working directly on research and development, helping clients scale their platforms, or simply looking for a place to store back-end workloads, Detroit offers a compelling opportunity for colocation in a growing and attractive business environment.
EdgeConneX’ Detroit data center is purpose-built, secure, carrier-neutral, and guarantees the shortest and fastest routes for delivering content and cloud applications to local market subscribers (consumer and enterprise) and Internet customers:
- Tier-3 Designed
- Capable of 20+kW per cabinet
- 18 miles from downtown Detroit
- Access to 20+ carriers, cable operators, and cloud onramps
- Engineered for customers requiring the lowest possible latency
- Availability for customized build-to-suit deployments up to 7MW
To learn more, download the EdgeConneX Detroit Data Sheet HERE.
Schedule a virtual tour HERE.
To tour DET01 onsite, please contact: info@edgeconnex.com