NVIDIA announces multiple data center partnerships on September 22

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 26, 2026, 20:18 UTC

On September 22, 2026, NVIDIA announced two separate infrastructure partnerships in the same day. The first was with VAST Data, centered on a product called DataEnclave, which NVIDIA describes as a confidential computing initiative designed to run AI models on customer-controlled infrastructure. Sharon AI was also named as a collaborator in that launch. The second partnership, announced alongside Google, is aimed at accelerating connection speeds within data centers. Separately, an NVIDIA executive addressed what the company called community resistance to data center expansion, attributing that pushback to fear of the unknown.

The clustering of announcements on a single day suggests a coordinated effort by NVIDIA to reinforce its position across multiple layers of AI infrastructure, from secure computing environments to raw network throughput. The DataEnclave product is notable because confidential computing, which isolates data so that even the infrastructure operator cannot access it, has been a growing concern for enterprises cautious about placing sensitive workloads in shared cloud environments. The Google alliance points in a different direction, toward raw speed and capacity rather than privacy, which means NVIDIA is simultaneously addressing two distinct objections that enterprise customers raise. The executive comment about fear of the unknown is also significant because it signals that local opposition to data center construction has become visible enough that NVIDIA feels it needs a public response.

No published reactions from the Pro-AI, Anti-AI or Middle Ground camps have appeared yet in connection with these announcements. Typically, the Pro-AI camp would highlight the confidential computing angle as evidence that the industry is solving legitimate privacy concerns, making large-scale AI adoption safer for regulated industries. The Anti-AI camp would be expected to question whether confidential computing claims can be independently verified, and to treat the executive's dismissal of community pushback as an attempt to delegitimize local concerns about energy use, land use and noise. A Middle Ground perspective would likely focus on whether customer-controlled infrastructure actually shifts meaningful accountability, or whether it is primarily a marketing reframing.

The details that would clarify how significant these partnerships are include any technical specifications released for DataEnclave's security architecture, the terms of the Google alliance, and whether the communities pushing back on data center construction respond to NVIDIA's framing or escalate their opposition through regulatory or legal channels.