Asia-Pacific data centre operator AirTrunk looks set to be bought by a group of investors led by the world's largest asset manager Blackstone for A$24 billion, making it the largest takeover deal in the region so far.
Four managed Blackstone funds along wiith the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have agreed to buy AirTrunk from Macquarie Asset Management, and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board.
Blackstone, founded by former Lehman Brothers bankers Peter Stephenson and Stephen Schwarzman in 1985 with the described AirTrunk as the largest data centre platform in the Asia-Pacific region.
AirTrunk has more than 800 megawatt of committed capacity for customers, and has bought land to support over 1 gigawatt of future growth.
It was founded in 2016 by Robin Khuda, formerly of NEXTDC and Metronode, and aimed to capitalise on the rapidly growing demand for hyperscale data centres in the Asia-Pacific.
“This transaction evidences the strength of the AirTrunk platform in a strong performing sector as we capture the next wave of growth from cloud services and AI and support the energy transition in Asia Pacific," Khuda, AirTrunk's chief executive said.
The data centre operator has been expanding in Australia in recent years, with a big data centre in Sydney West, and it has a strong presence in Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Blackstone meanwhile is eyeing up the booming data centre market worldwide, which in the United States alone is expected to see capital expenditure of US$1 trillion, drive by demand for artificial intelligence and other applications.
The asset manager has a data centre portfolio comprising US$55 billion which includes facilities under construction.
It said it has invested in other data centre companies, and is the owner of QTS, Coreweave and Digital Realty.
A further prospective development pipeline with over US$70 billion is also being considered to capitalise on data centre demand.
The deal is subject to regulatory approval by the Australian Foreign Investments Review Board.
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