By the fall of 2016, GDS held about a quarter of China's market for high-performance, carrier-neutral data centers, the largest share of anyone. The Shanghai company builds the halls where servers live: big floors, heavy power, cooling and links to every phone carrier. Its customers were cloud providers, internet giants and banks that needed more capacity every year. GDS filed to list in New York as China's cloud companies raced to keep up with demand.

Huang's Long Build

William Wei Huang founded GDS in 2001 and still ran it as chairman and CEO at the IPO. The company placed its data centers in China's main economic hubs, close to the customers who needed them most. Being carrier-neutral meant a client could connect to any telecom network inside a GDS building. The bet was about scale. Each new hall cost a great deal up front, then earned rent for many years once the racks filled.

Ten Dollars in New York

GDS sold American depositary shares at $10 in November 2016 and listed on Nasdaq under the ticker GDS. Huang held all of the Class B shares, which carried extra votes. The company kept borrowing and building, and later added a second listing in Hong Kong. It also built data centers outside China through a separate international business. GDS is still public on Nasdaq.

Cover: Strange Rocks, Gao Yang. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for towering stacked rocks (racks of servers).