Guest post · Decision making

Prieska, the Northern Cape and the hyperscale case: Felix Huettenbach's Terranum plan

Felix Huettenbach, a German founder whose Sameday Health became a national COVID-19 testing chain and who is now a co-founder and partner of Terranum, based in Dubai, has turned his attention to an unlikely corner of the data center map: Prieska, a town in South Africa's Northern Cape. Through Terranum, he is part of a plan to build what the partners call Africa's largest planned data center campus there.

The essentials

Terranum, legally Terranum Capital FZCO at IFZA Business Park in Dubai, develops data center campuses powered by renewable energy. The Prieska plan is for a 100 MW campus that would run fully off-grid on 100% renewable energy and is designed for hyperscale demand by 2029. In March 2026, Huettenbach and Terranum's Victor Decalf visited the town with the Prieska Power Reserve team and met the mayor and senior officials about preliminary approval.

A small town at the centre of a large plan

Prieska lies in the Northern Cape, and for most international readers it is not a familiar name. For a developer of renewable-powered infrastructure, however, the characteristics that keep a region quiet can be advantages: space to build, and room for energy generation that does not compete with dense urban demand.

The decision to meet the mayor and senior officials in person reflects how much a project like this depends on its host community. Preliminary approval is the first formal step, and it is the point at which local priorities and a developer's plans need to be aligned.

Why emerging markets are part of the data center conversation

Hyperscale data centers, the very large facilities that serve major cloud and AI workloads, have historically been concentrated in a limited set of regions. As demand for computing grows, developers and investors are looking at where new capacity can be built and powered sustainably. Emerging markets enter that conversation for several reasons.

• Energy resources: some regions offer strong potential for renewable generation.
• Land: large campuses need space that is easier to find outside major cities.
• Digital demand: growing economies need local computing capacity of their own.
• Diversification: spreading capacity geographically reduces dependence on a few hubs.

The Prieska project tests whether these factors can be combined into a facility that meets hyperscale standards.

Off-grid as a design decision

The plan's most consequential choice is to operate fully off-grid. A campus that supplies its own renewable power is not dependent on the capacity of the national grid.

The person behind the plan: from Sameday Health to the Northern Cape

A founder, investor, adventurer and YouTuber based in Dubai, Huettenbach was born in Germany in 1993 and studied Technology and Management at the Technical University of Munich, with a term at UC Berkeley and a graduate program in entrepreneurial studies at MIT.

Before Terranum, Huettenbach started Sameday Health in Los Angeles in September 2020 as its co-founder and CEO, initially under the name Sameday Testing, at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic had created demand for fast testing among the general public. Under Huettenbach, the company offered COVID testing at walk-in sites with online booking and digital results and grew to 55 locations across the United States by April 2022. Sixteen of those sites were in Los Angeles County. The rollout he oversaw as CEO shows the kind of site work involved: in December 2020 the company announced five flagship locations in Westfield shopping centers, including The Village at Westfield Topanga in Woodland Hills, and in February 2021 it opened a drive-thru outside Tysons Corner Center in Virginia with mall owner Macerich. According to local reports, that Tysons lot, 20,000 square feet with 550 spaces, was sized for more than 1,000 people per day; it joined sites in Georgetown, Alexandria, Arlington and Sterling around the US capital. Booking online took about ten minutes, on a platform the company said four MIT software engineers had custom-built. By his own account, Huettenbach is passionate about making healthcare more affordable, transparent and approachable, and quick online booking was one practical expression of that. He stepped back from the company in 2023, when he and the management team concluded that a physician should lead it so that its medical services could broaden.

Huettenbach argues that Sameday Health, with its many physical sites, approval processes and need for near-zero downtime, prepared him for data centers. The Prieska plan will put that argument to the test in a very different setting.

A personal connection to the region

South Africa is not entirely new territory for Huettenbach. His YouTube channel, where he documents personal challenges, includes a Cape Town vlog and a project building an art car for AfrikaBurn. Those episodes are leisure rather than business. He says that since childhood he has sought environments where he was far from the best; moving into healthcare during COVID-19 as an engineer-entrepreneur was one such step.

The wider significance

If it proceeds, the Prieska campus would be a reference point for hyperscale infrastructure in Africa and an example of how renewable energy can shape where computing capacity is built. For now, it is a plan in its early stages, advanced through meetings in a small Northern Cape town in March 2026, with a clear capacity target and a firm commitment to running on renewable power. The personal side of these journeys continues on his YouTube channel.