Hypertec Cloud Partners with Together AI and Acquires 5C Data Centers to Shape the Next Generation of AI Factories

Founded in 1984 as a family-owned business, Hypertec Group has spent the last four decades at the forefront of innovation in high-performance computing (HPC) as well as the design, building, and operation of state-of-the-art data centers. This legacy of technical excellence has positioned Hypertec Cloud, a division of Hypertec Group, as a leader in the next frontier of computing: AI Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

“We’ve been in the space of high-performance computing for a long time,” says Jonathan Ahdoot, CEO of 5C Group and former President of Hypertec Cloud. “It’s not only about setting it up - it’s about testing it so you can actually get the performance and output you need for AI workflows.”

While the past has brought numerous advances in AI cloud computing, the need for speed, power, reliability, and innovative solutions has continued to accelerate.

From Customer to Partner: Together AI

In 2024 Together AI, an AI Acceleration Cloud that runs the full generative AI life cycle, came to Hypertec Cloud with a seemingly impossible ask: a 2,000-GPU AI cluster to be up and running in one month.

“Everyone else was giving us 6 months, 8-month dates,” says Vipul Ved Prakash, Co-founder and CEO of Together AI. “Jonathan [Ahdoot] said, “We can do it.”

Hypertec Cloud took on the task, and delivered the AI clusters within the deadline along with all the support and infrastructure Together AI needed. Steps for the delivery included finding the data center, assessing it, and performing a custom retrofit; sourcing all the components and servers and installing them; and finally, running all the performance tests for validation of the working clusters to hand it over to Together AI.

“I was very proud of how we were able to deliver this,” says Ahdoot, “not only on time and at a record speed, but with quality, with reliability, and the support levels they were expecting, which ended up serving as a foundation for our relationship.”

Together AI was impressed with Hypertec Cloud to the point where the relationship evolved from client to partner. Working with Together AI also gave Hypertec Cloud more insight into the upcoming challenges in the AI industry, one of which was getting access to the capacity sufficient to deploy large and extra-large AI clusters.

In September 2024, as a first step in meeting these challenges, Hypertec Cloud proactively announced plans to expand to a capacity to support up to 100,000 of the latest generation GPUs by 2025, a venture of such magnitude that it garnered industry attention. A few months later, the second accelerated phase of the partnership with Together AI led to the announcement of co-building a turbocharged NVIDIA GB200 Cluster with up to 36K Blackwell GPUs.

With today’s AI systems demanding thousands of GPUs, miles of fiber optic cables, complex and expensive networking, and a great deal of power, and with even more large-scale AI growth expected in both the near and far future, Hypertec Cloud had to make a bold decision to continue to grow.

April 2025: Hypertec Cloud Acquires 5C Data Centers

With this vision in mind, Hypertec Cloud made the strategic decision to spin off from Hypertec Group and acquire 5C Data Centers, a leading hosting partner for hyperscalers and high-performance computing (HPC) providers, joining forces to create one of the largest AI digital infrastructure providers in North America, a new entity called 5C Group.  

The operation and maintenance of AI Clusters require a very skilled technical team with AI-specific expertise on both the infrastructure and data center sides. Hypertec Cloud saw the need to be tightly connected to both sides so they could problem-solve quickly and efficiently when workloads inevitably challenge the system. It became clear that Hypertec Cloud would need to be in a position to control the entire infrastructure stack to meet the needs of the largest AI frontier labs, AI-native enterprises, and large-scale enterprise clients.

“AI grew way faster than we all expected last year,” explains Ahdoot. “Large data center capacity that was available was eaten up, and now new capacity needs to be built. Capacity takes, on standard, 18-24 months to build. So you have a gap in 2025 and 2026 for data center capacity.”

While other data centers are still scaling up over the next 30 months, much of 5C Group’s capacity is available during this large gap period, filling in the gap in the timeline for AI computing needs.

5C Group’s portfolio of AI-optimized data center campuses across the U.S. have more than 600 Megawatts of capacity of its total 2 Gigawatts (GW) ready to deploy in the next 6 to 18 months, for new and existing AI data center colocation and compute clusters. Its platform is built to meet the extreme density, power, and cooling demands of AI workloads—laying the foundation for the next decade of AI innovation.

As the demand for AI deployments continues to surge and the availability of large-scale data center capacity remains limited, this acquisition enables faster time-to-market for extra-large AI deployments. The combined platform leverages integrated compute and data center designs, purpose-built and customizable, creating a significant impact in areas that matter—shortening timelines for data center and large cluster deployment, and enabling synchronized infrastructure rollouts—putting the new entity in an ideal position to build the next generation of AI factories that will power the industry’s future.

As for Together AI, the company is excited for the possibilities that the partnership with the newly created entity, 5C Group, offers them.

“It’s really great news that Hypertec [Cloud] has acquired 5C [Data Centers], this incredible portfolio of data centers, which really is the most constrained resource right now,” says Ved Prakash. “We can contemplate projects of any scale and have a high level of confidence that they will be executed flawlessly.”

The acquisition also marks a big milestone for Hypertec Cloud in terms of growth, representing a full AI digital infrastructure provider from data center services to purpose-built AI clusters tailored for performance, reliability, and sustainability, aligning with business needs for time to market and cost effectiveness.

Next Steps

5C Group, the newly formed entity, now has a platform to impact the future of AI—with control over the entire digital infrastructure stack for AI computing, they have the ability to implement new technologies that can impact efficiency even further. Drawing on Hypertec Group’s decades of experience in hardware and infrastructure design, white-glove support, engineering innovations for sustainability, operations, and optimization, the new entity, 5C Group, will incorporate advanced cooling solutions—such as direct-to-chip liquid cooling and immersion cooling—to drive higher rack densities and energy savings.

5C Group is looking to even larger-scale solutions for the future, solutions that are even 10 or 30 times larger. Both Together AI and 5C Group have invested in open source development, tools, and community as part of their histories, and they will continue to support such solutions as a core value.