In early June, a fire broke out in a half-finished building at the Lake Mariner data center in Somerset, New York. Firefighters encountered the absence of an effective alarm system, a fire-suppression system, and even three dead fire hydrants; the safety documents legally required to be made available to them had burned in the same fire. Station Chief Steve Matiz of the Beker Fire Department said his team entered the building "blind," facing heavy black smoke from unknown chemicals.
Built on a former coal mine on Lake Ontario at a cost of $3.2 billion, the data center is one of the largest AI data center construction projects in New York. TeraWulf is the owner and operator of the infrastructure, while the British company Fluidstack is responsible for its operations. Google has guaranteed Fluidstack’s lease payments in exchange for a warrant on 14% of future shares, and Anthropic is also a key client accessing the center to meet its computational needs.