Investment firm Blackstone is the successful bidder purchasing Australian data centre operator AirTrunk in a deal worth A$20 billion (US$13.4 billion).
AirTrunk was put up for sale in January. Owners, Macquaire Asset Management (MAM) and Canadian pension fund PSP Investments (PSP) had been looking for around AU$12 billion (US$8 billion).
Blackstone, one of the largest investment firms in the world, reportedly fended off competition from DigitalBridge and GIP to acquire the Australian firm, according to Bloomberg.
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Blackstone’s offering is reportedly higher than rival bidders, with the investment firm now in talks with MAM and PSP to finalize the deal.
AirTrunk was founded in 2015 and operates data centre sites across the APAC region, including its native Australia, as well as in Japan and Singapore.
The company opened JHB1, a 150MW hyperscale data centre in Johor Bahru, Malaysia in June, offering infrastructure to power cloud-based AI workloads for domestic and international partners.
Beyond JHB1, AirTrunk is currently expanding its MEL1 data centre campus in Melbourne. The “huge” expansion will add 100MW of new IT load to the site.
AirTrunk’s owners had mulled an IPO for the company last October but instead opted for a sale.
The deal would add to Blackstone’s sizable data centre portfolio, currently worth some $55 billion, according to its earnings call in July.
Blackstone also told investors that it has more than $70 billion in prospective data centre pipeline development, as it looks to capitalize on the ever-increasing demand for infrastructure from businesses looking to run generative AI and high-performance computing workloads.
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