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Blackstone BX+1.83% is buying Australian data center company AirTrunk for $16.1 billion, as the asset management giant hopes to establish itself as a data platform leader in the artificial intelligence boom.
The acquisition is Blackstone’s largest investment in the Asia Pacific region, the company said Wednesday. Sean Klimczak, global head of Blackstone Infrastructure, and Nadeem Meghji, global co-head of Blackstone Real Estate, said the move will expand Blackstone’s data platform presence, which is the foundation of AI capacity and development.
“Digital infrastructure is experiencing unprecedented demand driven by the AI revolution as well as the broader digitization of the economy,” the pair said in a statement.
Prior to AirTrunk, Blackstone’s portfolio consisted of $55 billion worth of data centers, including facilities under construction, and more than $70 billion in prospective development, they said.
AirTrunk will add 800 megawatts of data center capacity to Blackstone’s portfolio, and owns land to support over 1 gigawatt of future growth in the region, according to the company.
“AirTrunk is another vital step as Blackstone seeks to be the leading digital infrastructure investor in the world across the ecosystem, including data centers, power and related services,” said Blackstone president and chief operating officer Jon Gray.
Data centers are physical locations that store computing machines and other hardware containing computing infrastructure that powers IT systems. Given the massive amounts of storage and energy required by AI, firms across industries have already invested billions to build up their capacity.
Blackstone said it’s looking to capitalize on the estimated $2 trillion in capital expenditures earmarked for building and facilitating new data centers worldwide over the next five years, including $1 trillion in the U.S. alone.
The world’s largest asset manager, Blackstone touts itself as “a leading investor globally in data centers.” It has invested in both the debt and equity of a handful of major data center firms, including large-scale cloud platform Coreweave and Digital Realty, and as owner of Kansas-based QTS, a leading global data center company.
Last December, Blackstone announced a $7 billion hyperscale data center development joint venture with Digital Realty, which is expected to support approximately 500 MW of total IT load.
Robin Khuda, founder and chief executive officer of AirTrunk, said the deal will allow the company to “capture the next wave of growth from cloud services and AI and support the energy transition in Asia Pacific.”