Global Technical Realty (GTR) has been set up as a build-to-suit and roll-up acquisition data centre platform “seeking suitable M&A opportunities, primarily in key European markets”.
The company has been founded by industry veteran Franek Sodzawiczny who serves as CEO of the business.
KKR said the capital comes from its third global infrastructure fund, which may be supplemented with additional commitments over time, to develop and build data centres for large technology companies through GTR across Europe over the coming years.
Alongside debt financing, KKR’s equity commitment is expected to support more than $2.5 billion of asset development and investment, including opportunities from “a highly active commercial pipeline” as the demand for third-party data centre provision continues to grow.
The move comes as more private equity funds continue to commit cash to the expansion of data centre businesses as demand for digital services continues to break records.
Elsewhere, GTR has so far partnered with Mercury Engineering to design and develop a data centre product specifically catered to the needs of hyperscale cloud service providers.
Waldemar Szlezak, Managing Director of KKR, said: “The data centre market in Europe presents a unique opportunity to invest behind the secular trend of increased cloud services adoption and demand for data.”
GTR CEO Sodzawiczny, said: “We are thrilled to have found an investor like KKR that shares our vision for the future of the data centre market.
“KKR’s breadth of resources and tremendous expertise will allow GTR to fully participate in this growing market and provide a solid foundation for GTR’s future growth and success.”
Sodzawiczny, is the former founder and CEO of Zenium Data Centers and co-founder and CDO of Sentrum. Zenium was acquired by CyrusOne in January 2018 for $442 million.
The management team has built over 400MW of data centres across the globe, according to GTR. Other members of the staff include Martin Carroll, formerly Lead Director, EMEA Data Centre Advisory at JLL; Mark Trevor, formerly Partner and Head of EMEA Data Centre Transaction and Advisory at Cushman & Wakefield and Tom Sodzawiczny, formerly Associate Director of Capital Markets at Colliers International.
KKR was advised by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Global Technical Realty was advised by Charles Russell Speechlys.
