Weekend Interview: Tonaquint CEO Jim Buie On Finding A Niche In The AI Data Center Gold Rush

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In a data center landscape increasingly dominated by single-tenant megacampuses for the world’s largest tech firms, smaller colocation data center providers have been forced to reexamine how they fit into the industry’s new AI-driven ecosystem.

But for Jim Buie, the newly appointed CEO at Tonaquint Data Centers, the sector’s rapid evolution looks less like a risk and more like an opportunity for growth. 

A Florida native but longtime Denver resident, Buie took the helm in October at Tonaquint, which owns and operates a small portfolio of colocation data centers and provides cloud services in St. George, Utah, Boise and Oklahoma City. Prior to joining the Utah-based firm, Buie held executive positions at telecom firms and colocation providers like Flexential and Involta — since rebranded as Ark Data Centers — where he served as CEO for seven years before stepping down in 2023. 

In his tenure at Involta, Buie oversaw a significant expansion of the firm’s multitenant footprint nationally in smaller “edge” data center markets. He similarly envisions a rapid growth trajectory, and a rebrand, at Tonaquint, with demand driven by the artificial intelligence needs of enterprise customers. He says they are increasingly lost in the shuffle as providers focus on the needs of Big Tech hyperscale tenants.

Tonaquint already has three new projects in the works, potentially doubling its total portfolio and pushing the company into new markets. 

Buie sat down with Bisnow to talk about his vision for Tonaquint’s future, the next emerging data center hubs and what a disastrous season for Florida State football can teach industry leaders.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: You have a big emotional investment in Florida State football. You didn’t just attend the school — you grew up in Florida and actually got to know the Seminole’s late, legendary coach, Bobby Bowden. I hope I don’t get us off on the wrong foot here, but FSU just wrapped up one of the most disappointing campaigns in the history of the program. As somebody with a long track record of leading organizations, are there any lessons that could be taken from FSU’s disastrous season for leaders in the data center industry or other businesses? 

Buie: It speaks to the state of college football with NIL — you can either spend the money and compete in what is now a quasi-professional league or not. It’s very relevant to business in terms of adjusting to change in the landscape in order to be competitive. There are lessons to be learned about how you lead through change, how you make strategic choices and think about serving the needs of student-athletes or, in our case, clients.  Their needs are changing, and you either keep pace or you don't.

The world hasn’t experienced anything quite like what we’re seeing in this industry with AI since maybe the Industrial Revolution, and it's scary for some people. One thing I've instilled at Tonaquint is: How do we move quickly and adjust to the changing dynamics? You need to be willing to take risks and listen to what clients need. In college sports, the athletes now can go anywhere they want and transfer annually, and that translates to our business.  But if you have a growth mindset, it's all about embracing change to win in that environment. My hope for my college football fandom is that they do the same.

Bisnow: I’m curious how the need to embrace change applies to Tonaquint. It’s been about four months since you took the helm as CEO. Are you pushing the firm in a different direction to adjust to a changing data center landscape?

Buie: We have a vision to be a larger player. A lot of it for me with the team has been creating that mission that we're going to be a billion-dollar company. How we do that starts with the core values of the company. Because we're not as big as some of the hyperscale players, we have to work hard and smart and fast and be more flexible in how we do business. 

Now we're really pivoting into execution mode, and we're going to do some great things in 2025 and beyond. We're going to continue to expand across the United States. We have a great balance sheet, and we really want to meet clients when and where they need infrastructure. 

We’re actually looking at a more national brand name change. There will be more to come on that. We have some cool brand ideas that are coming to fruition. 

Bisnow: The unprecedented growth of the data center industry has been driven largely by massive campuses for tech giants scrambling to build AI infrastructure. That’s not the space you guys play in. What’s the growth opportunity for firms like Tonaquint that focus on colocation in smaller markets? 

Buie:  We see a nice, underserved niche for enterprise that falls between 0 megawatts and 80 megawatts of power that we’re going to go after and serve, which is on the lower end. Some of the hyperscale companies are building their own facilities that are a gigawatt of power. We're more in the enterprise space. 

The demand set is largely enterprises deploying AI. We worked with one company in manufacturing where the problems they’re solving with AI tie into their manufacturing process. They have a lot of secret sauce, so they want to own the servers. Those are the types of clients we're seeing. No CFO that I've talked to in any enterprise wants to give their IT team $300M to build a corporate-owned data center. 

Most of the enterprise requirements are in the 5 to 10-megawatt range. It allows us to do greenfield builds at that size. If you're a large public enterprise, you don't have the time, interest or expertise to build something at that smaller scale that we do. We have a great design that's fit to that size that's very flexible. It also enables us to find buildings like a vacated factory and quickly renovate it into a purpose-built data center. So, we'll be doing greenfield and restoration of buildings that have adequate utility power. 

Bisnow: You brought up future development and expansion twice now. What’s in the pipeline? And are you also looking to grow through acquisition as Tonaquint did in Oklahoma City in 2023? 

Buie: It's both. I talk about meeting AI companies or other businesses where they are and when they need it. We have a project right now where the need is for 2026, so it’s a greenfield build. The initial deployment is 5 megawatts and it'll probably be 10 megawatts within two years. At the same time, we have some AI companies who need deployments in the next six months, so we’d need to have that capability and that inventory ready much faster, like we have in Oklahoma.  

There are actually three projects in total. One will be in an existing market. Two will drive new markets for us. It's a great way to support our geographic expansion strategy with anchor tenancy. That's our preference. Like any investor, we want to put money less speculatively to work. 

The good thing with a lot of the AI deployments is there is more flexibility on the client side for where those deployments can be placed. The AI workloads are less latency sensitive than others, and that allows us as a data center company to pick the location, the land site and utility company we're working with, all to the client's advantage.

Bisnow: Will Tonaquint’s footprint remain focused on emerging ‘edge’ markets, or will there be expansion into some of the industry’s major hubs? 

Buie: We like to call our data center design “data center anywhere,” and we literally mean that. But emerging markets represent the best opportunity. The economic development you can bring to an edge market is advantageous over established, mature markets. The amount of land available and the variety of utility options can be better. So, we're going to focus on emerging markets. 

Our clients are taking us to some larger markets than we're currently in today.  That's a good thing. You want to be able to serve your clients, and a combination of those markets and edge markets are a great niche for us, especially with large corporations. 

But we'll be heavy in the edge markets. The demand’s there and those projects move faster and meet client needs in a different way than your typical data center. Every data center company in the world has deployments in Northern Virginia, Phoenix and a few other markets. We understand that's a different business model and that we don’t need to be there. 

Bisnow: You say projects move faster in edge markets. Why is that the case? 

Buie: I’ve found the mid- to small-size utility companies easier to work with. They're less bureaucratic. There's less process. They do what they say they're going to do and hit their timelines. With larger utilities in major markets, you’re competing with demand more significantly. Small and mid-sized utilities have incentive for that region to be part of the impetus for economic growth. They want to attract new industries and businesses and tend to be more tied in with the economic growth of the region than others. I think they’re great partners, and that's why we prefer those emerging markets. 

Bisnow: What will determine which edge markets see significant growth in the coming years? Does the trend of tech giants like Amazon and Meta building enormous campuses far from major metro areas play a role? 

Buie: As we evaluate where to put in a deployment, the first things I look for are available land that's zoned, good utility and good fiber. If you have those three ingredients, the data center location is a no-brainer.

We do watch the large public companies very closely because they can make markets. There are billions and billions of dollars being put to work, and paying attention to the locations where these markets are being made is important.  Hillsboro, Oregon, wasn’t a data center market 15 years ago. Now it’s a good example of how certain companies can make a market. 

Bisnow: In your time at Involta, you were instrumental in a deal that saw the firm get acquired by Carlyle. Tonaquint was acquired by CVC DIF in 2022. What will we see in the data center M&A landscape this year? 

Buie: 2025 will be interesting. It's almost an investment year, the way I look at it. Demand has shot through the roof, and construction is in catch-up mode. There's a lot of inventory being built, including by us. Acquisitionwise, I think the bigger M&A volume hits in 2026 and 2027 as people monetize that inventory. It should be a couple of years of investment, and then you're going to see who created value. 

There'll be winners and losers that are available in the M&A space. We're always looking for opportunities. There are currently opportunities for acquisition. We've got a couple we’re working on right now that hopefully we can announce in the first half of 2025. So, acquisitions are definitely going to happen, but once this inventory gets out and those investments have really been monetized is when you'll see a lot more companies come to market.

Bisnow: Give us a bold prediction for the rest of the year. 

Buie: Sticking to the tech arena, we're going to move from 70% of companies using AI to 100% of companies and the population using AI.  Everybody's talking about it now, but there will not be a man, woman or child who's not using AI for something.

Bisnow: So, there’s no “AI bubble” about to burst, as some believe?

Buie: There’s no bubble.

Bisnow: What is your weekend routine or favorite weekend activity?

Buie: This time of year, it's skiing. I'm a die-hard skier. In the summer it's golf.  But right now, it is skiing as much as I can get in and as long as I can be on the slope. I'm up and down as many times as I can get.

I love Vail, particularly the Back Bowls. My favorite is Sun Down Bowl. You just can't beat that ride. I would do that 20 times in a day if I could get up and down that fast.