Digital Realty Backs AI and Hybrid Cloud Adoption With Innovation Lab

Digital Realty DLR recently announced the launch of a data center innovation lab, Digital Realty Innovation Lab (“DRIL”). This lab enables partners and customers to introduce their workloads or use pre-configured infrastructure to test AI and hybrid cloud connectivity before deploying at scale.

Located at a live colocation data center at Digital Realty's Northern Virginia campus, DRIL allows existing customers the ability to configure their new workloads in a lab environment to validate the performance and optimize it through scale-up. New customers can collaborate with DLR and its partners to replicate a representative architecture.

The DRIL makes things easier for businesses by removing guesswork. It helps them test performance, optimize configurations, and quickly connect to cloud and network providers through its global interconnections and orchestration platform, ServiceFabric. Moreover, the company plans to roll out DRIL in London in early 2026.

Key Features of DRIL

DRIL offers advanced support for AI and high-performance computing by enabling high-density colocation of up to 150kW per cabinet while helping businesses optimize AI infrastructure needs for power, cooling and GPU resources. It provides direct cloud connectivity for hybrid cloud validation and easy onboarding via ServiceFabric, along with tools to orchestrate AI workloads across Digital Realty's Private AI Exchange (AIPx). Additionally, it enables enterprises to test latency across different locations and cloud destinations to ensure smooth and reliable performance.

Final Take on DLR

With the growth of AI, DRL plans to curate and provide the required infrastructure and engage in strategic partnerships to fast-track its adoption across businesses to improve their performance through innovations. The move will help attract newer clients and aid its leasing activity.

Over the past six months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) data center REIT have risen 14.7%, outperforming the industry’s growth of 0.4%.

Analysts, too, seem bullish on this stock, with the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 AFFO per share having been revised northward by 2.1% to $7.20 over the past two months.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are VICI Properties VICI and Terreno Realty TRNO, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for VICI’s 2025 FFO per share has been revised marginally northward over the past month to $2.39.

The consensus estimate for TRNO’s 2025 FFO per share has been revised upward marginally to $2.61 over the past month.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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