Trendyol, Castle Investments to build $500M data center in Turkish capital

Türkiye's leading e-commerce platform Trendyol announced on Tuesday that it will join forces with Castle Investments to develop and operate a cutting-edge data center in the Turkish capital Ankara.

The project, dubbed Ankara Data Hub, will offer 48 megawatts of IT capacity, making it one of the largest and most advanced facilities in the region. The center will be Uptime Tier III certified and is designed to meet the technological needs of hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and local enterprises.

The partnership between Trendyol and Castle Investments, founded by data center veteran Tarek Al Ashram, was formalized through a Shareholders' Agreement signed in Dubai.

The ceremony was attended by high-level officials including Omar Sultan Al Olama, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Mustafa Varank, Chair of the Committee on Industry, Trade, Energy, Natural Resources, Information and Technology in the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye.

“Trendyol's leadership is built on its world-class technological solutions and smart data applications,” said Caglayan Cetin, president of Trendyol Group.

“The Ankara Data Center project will significantly enhance the quality of service we offer to our rapidly growing local and international customer base, and represents further evidence of our commitment to investing in Türkiye and our confidence in the country's strong digital ecosystem,” he added.

- An iconic project and a new regional benchmark

Castle Investments CEO Tarek Al Ashram described the project as transformative for the region.

“This partnership represents a major step forward in shaping the future of digital infrastructure in the region,” he said.

“Combining our extensive track record in delivering mission-critical data center facilities with Trendyol's technological leadership and digital scale in Türkiye will make the Ankara Data Hub an iconic project and a new regional benchmark,” he said.

The facility will initially launch with 9.6 megawatts of IT capacity by the third quarter of 2026. The total development cost is estimated at approximately $500 million, with construction already underway in the Temelli area of Ankara.

Trendyol is expected to occupy a significant portion of the data center's capacity to support its expanding operations, while the remaining capacity will be open to other cloud and enterprise customers.