illumynt expands Columbus-area campus to 200,000 square feet for AI hardware recovery
The Massachusetts-based technology lifecycle company is adding capacity in central Ohio to test, repair and recover components from AI and data center hardware, with an Innovation Center that includes diagnostics for liquid-cooled systems used in high-performance computing.
Technology lifecycle management company illumynt is expanding its Columbus-area operations to approximately 200,000 square feet, adding capacity to test, repair and recover value from hardware used in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and data centers.
The Burlington, Massachusetts-based company announced the expansion Sept. 23. According to the company, the campus will serve hyperscale data center operators, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and enterprise technology customers across North America.
By the numbers
- About 200,000 square feet: illumynt's Columbus-area campus after the expansion
- More than 190,000 square feet: the Columbus site's size as reported in January 2026
- About 100,000 square feet: the facility's size in 2024
- 60%: illumynt's year-over-year revenue growth in 2025, as reported by the company
- 200: employees companywide, as reported in January
- 3: new countries planned for 2026: Singapore, Malaysia and Canada
illumynt's Columbus footprint has grown over the past two years. The facility measured about 100,000 square feet in 2024, according to trade publication Resource Recycling. In January, illumynt reported it had expanded the Columbus site to more than 190,000 square feet and named it the company's Global Innovation Center of Excellence.
Why AI hardware is changing the recovery business
According to illumynt, AI is speeding up hardware refresh cycles and sending more valuable, technically complex equipment into the secondary market. The company noted that recovering that value takes deeper diagnostics, engineering expertise and component-level recovery than traditional IT asset disposition models provide.
"AI is fundamentally changing both the value and complexity of the technology entering the recovery lifecycle," said Jörg Herbarth, CEO of illumynt. "Our expansion in Ohio gives us the scale and technical environment to continue investing in the engineering, automation and recovery capabilities our customers increasingly require."
The expanded campus will support diagnostics and testing, repair and refurbishment, component recovery, secure processing of data-bearing assets, serialized asset tracking and sustainability reporting.
An Innovation Center for emerging hardware
The Columbus campus also houses illumynt's Innovation Center, where engineers will evaluate emerging hardware, develop new diagnostic and recovery processes and move them into production. The center is the development and testing environment for Talorem, the company's proprietary platform for asset identification, diagnostics, repair, component recovery and lifecycle data.
Part of that work focuses on liquid-cooled systems. The company explained that testing high-performance hardware under the thermal conditions it runs in allows for more accurate evaluation, grading and value recovery of advanced components.
"Scale alone isn't enough," Herbarth said. "The opportunity is to combine operational scale with engineering depth and technology that allows us to understand an asset more precisely, determine its highest-value next use and recover more value before recycling becomes the only option."
In its January announcement, illumynt reported 60% year-over-year revenue growth in 2025 and a workforce of 200 employees. It also said it planned to expand into Singapore, Malaysia and Canada in 2026.
