What’s up at the Star in KC? Let’s talk multi-megawatt AI, humanized data centers and overweight robots

What could be more exciting than a data center? Don’t answer that – at least, not until you’ve seen what’s happening at our facility in Kansas City.

Maybe you don’t care about data center infrastructure, and if you’ve ever seen a typical data center, you would be forgiven for that. Normally, they are anonymous industrial sheds on the outskirts of town – ugly, boring slabs of steel that have zero connection to human beings and often have close to zero human beings working inside.

That sucks. We wanted something different, and a unique facility in Kansas City was the first space on our list to transform into something better.

If you’re local, you know it as the KC Star building, where the Kansas City Star newspaper used to be printed. It was the perfect place for a data center retrofit, and Patmos assumed operations there in November 2024.

It’s a high-capacity AI and GPU data center

In terms of data center capacity, it’s a 30 MW facility today, with the space, power, and cooling required for next-generation GPU and AI infrastructure – hardware that demands not a few tens of kilowatts per cabinet, but hundreds.

The data center portion of the building has been operational with clients for some time, and we’ve just made another 10 MW available for new clients to roll in. And when we say roll in, it’s about as close to an on-demand deployment of your racks as possible.

Normally, when high-density colocation space becomes available, it can take a data center operator six months or more to prepare it for new clients.

We’ve cut that down to 90 days by working in parallel with customers to fit out their space to their exact specifications and project-managing the process so that when their hardware is delivered, we’re ready for it.

It’s also a mixed-use Technology Campus by design

That’s the first twist, but there’s another. This building is an iconic part of the Kansas City cityscape, with a history that everyone local knows. From the beginning, we set out to make it very different from the typical anonymous data center by creating a technology campus that’s useful for humans, not just AI servers.

It’s a very large building, and alongside the data center facility, we’re creating shared working spaces, conference spaces, and venues for concerts, art, culture, and community events. The idea is to make the building part of the community again rather than simply turning it into another piece of isolated technology infrastructure. The sky’s the limit.

Patmos COO Joe Morgan spoke about the concept in a recent interview with local station KCTV5.

“A lot of times, data centers that are coming in, they’re not really giving back to the community in any way,” Joe said. “We’re finding creative ways to re-use those buildings for tech working spaces, for event spaces, art installations… whatever we can do to take what is probably an eyesore and turn it into something that fits inside the community.”

Robot security rolls in too

While we’ve been making the KC facility “rack and roll ready” for clients, something else has rolled onto the scene – the heaviest member of the Patmos team. Meet Lance, our new security robot!

Standing just shy of five feet tall but weighing in at 420 lbs., Lance is no pushover. It’s an automated security bot that patrols the perimeter of the building, keeping an eye on ne’er-do-wells and helping secure the premises for data center colocation clients, future co-working space users, and concert-goers.

Lance complements the human security team at the facility and recently caught the eye of The Kansas City Star, which caught up with Joe Morgan to learn more.

Patmos security robot "Lance"

“Lance is actually a tool for the security people as much as anything else,” Joe explained. “Even with 24/7 security, it’s like, do you really at two in the morning want to send one individual by themselves to, you know, go inspect something? It’s a big building, right, it’s essentially a full city block.”

With autonomous AI and remote-control modes, Lance’s 360-degree camera has already captured footage of an attempted burglary in the area, which was passed on to the police to help their investigation. As it patrols the area, Lance has also become a familiar feature for downtown KC locals.

“I think there’s like five different TikToks out there now about Lance. He’s definitely the most popular employee, I think, at Patmos right now,” said Joe. “And he brings a smile to people’s faces.”

You can read the full article and watch an interview with Joe over at The Kansas City Star – which, as well as being a detailed write-up, is also a strong contender for this week’s Headline Editor Tries Hard For Clicks award. We appreciate the coverage and traffic, guys. Thanks!

Learn more

If you’d like to learn more about our high-density AI and GPU infrastructure, check out the Patmos AI Campus page – or contact us to talk about your infrastructure requirements.