With a majority of organizations increasing their investments in AI along with surging demand for high-powered cloud computing, investors are flocking to opportunities that support the development of new data centers.
Investors have poured significant capital into developing these facilities, which house IT infrastructure and can contain thousands of servers and span tens of thousands of square feet. Global PE deals in data centers and relevant sectors have almost doubled in a short span, climbing to $107.7 billion in the four years through Sept. 16, from $49.9 billion invested in the four years prior, PitchBook data shows.
Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bet on the sector when they on Sept. 4 acquired AirTrunk, the largest data center operator in the Asia-Pacific, at a $16 billion valuation.
Other investors piling on data center investments include DigitalBridge and Silver Lake, which led a $9.2 billion equity investment in June for Vantage Data Centers, which develops and operates hyperscale data center campuses globally.
Blue Owl is yet another example. The firm partnered in August with data center operators Chirisa Technology Parks and PowerHouse Data Centers to develop large-scale data centers for AI cloud firm CoreWeave.
Who else is investing heavily in this sector to power our digital economy?
We compiled a list of the most active investors in data centers, based on the total number of PE deals they’ve inked since 2018. These deals include investments in physical data centers, companies that build and operate data centers, and information services providers to the industry.
Data analyst Sara Good contributed to this article.
Featured image by Jason Marz/Getty Images
