Digital Realty Partners with Blackfuel to Deploy AI Inference Platform in Barcelona

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 30, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- Digital Realty has partnered with Blackfuel to bring a native AI inference platform to its BCN1 data center in Barcelona. The collaboration leverages Dell Technologies AI Factory infrastructure and AMD GPUs, providing a robust AI capacity foundation. This deployment is part of Digital Realty's broader PlatformDIGITAL ecosystem, which includes its software-defined interconnection platform, ServiceFabric.

ServiceFabric plays a crucial role in this partnership by enabling AI services to be delivered across Digital Realty's connected ecosystem, closer to the enterprise applications, data, and users they are designed to serve. This approach reduces the need for organizations to move large volumes of data across public environments to access AI capabilities. Instead, the inference is brought closer to where the data already resides, thanks to private connectivity provided by ServiceFabric.

According to Chris Sharp, Chief Technology Officer at Digital Realty, the next phase of AI will be measured in useful tokens per megawatt. By bringing Blackfuel's inference platform onto ServiceFabric, enterprises can reach high-performance AI services on the same connected ecosystem where their applications and data already live. This partnership marks a significant step in Digital Realty's strategy to deliver AI services more efficiently and effectively.

The core of the collaboration is the integration of Blackfuel's inference platform with ServiceFabric, which will enable AI services to be delivered across Digital Realty's connected ecosystem. This setup is particularly beneficial for agentic workflows requiring 20 to 50 sequential inference API calls. By reducing Time-to-First-Token (TTFT) by 50 milliseconds through ServiceFabric's optimized network latency, these workflows can see an overall task completion time reduction of 1 to 2.5 seconds compared to public internet connectivity. At the scale of millions of tasks per day, these incremental gains can translate into significant efficiencies.

Digital Realty's global data center footprint, which extends across more than 800 facilities, supports this initiative. The company's data center network includes 300+ facilities in 55+ metros across 30+ countries on six continents. This global reach allows Blackfuel to scale AI services beyond Barcelona, supporting more deterministic access to distributed enterprise data sets, tools, and applications. The partnership aims to transform AI from an Internet-accessed service into an enterprise-grade platform, improving responsiveness, governance, and the ability to scale adoption across business-critical use cases.

Blackfuel, an inference-focused neocloud co-founded by Charles Kantor, Xavier Fischer, and Dali Kilani, brings dedicated accelerator infrastructure, proprietary software, and long-term commercial commitments to build and operate AI compute at scale. The Barcelona deployment forms the foundation for Blackfuel's global expansion, with the company's goal to make reliable AI capacity available wherever businesses need it.

The partnership between Digital Realty and Blackfuel underscores the growing importance of low-latency connectivity in AI deployments. By integrating Blackfuel's inference platform with ServiceFabric, Digital Realty is positioning itself to meet the increasing demand for efficient and localized AI services.