Vitol acquires 600 MW South Carolina data center from Meridian Gridworks in commodity trader’s AI infrastructure push

Vitol, the world’s largest independent energy trading house, just made a move that says a lot about where the smart money thinks energy markets are heading. The company’s renewables arm, VC Renewables, has acquired a 600 MW data center campus in South Carolina from Meridian Gridworks, marking one of the first times a major commodity trader has planted its flag squarely in AI infrastructure. The deal and why it matters The acquisition, disclosed in mid-August 2026, gives Vitol control of a campus with 600 megawatts of capacity. To put that in perspective, 600 MW is enough electricity to power roughly 450,000 homes, or, more relevantly, enough to run a massive hyperscale data center operation serving the compute-hungry needs of AI model training and inference. Meridian Gridworks, the seller, was founded in 2025 and specializes in data centers, edge computing, and renewable energy development. Despite selling the campus, Meridian will continue to oversee its ongoing development. South Carolina has quietly become a magnet for data center investment. Hundreds of megawatts of operating and planned capacity have materialized in the state in recent years, backed by multi-billion-dollar inv...