Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and technology company Equinix have teamed up to invest more than US$1bn (€870m) in European ‘hyperscale’ data centres.
The joint venture, of which GIC owns 80%, will acquire two operational data centres in London and Paris, and develop two more in Frankfurt, one in Amsterdam and another in London.
When fully developed, the six ‘xScale’ facilities will provide approximately 155 megawatts of power capacity and will be operated by Equinix.
Hyperscale data centres are designed to respond to increasing demand for data transfer, by increasing scale greatly and quickly.
Lee Kok Sun, CIO of GIC Real Estate, said: “As a long-term value investor, we are confident that the strong growth in data consumption and public cloud data storage will continue to drive secular demand for hyperscale data centres.”
He said the six centres “will generate steady and resilient returns in the long run”.
Charles Meyers, president and CEO of Equinix, said: “It has been a long journey to reach this point, but we are tremendously excited to announce the formation of our first xScale data centres joint venture.
“Partnering with a world-class investment firm like GIC will provide the opportunity to make significant capital investments in order to capture targeted large footprint deployments while continuing to optimise our capital structure.
“The JV structure will enable us to extend our cloud leadership while providing significant value to a critical set of hyperscale customers.
“We look forward to launching similar JVs in other operating regions and believe that these efforts will continue to further differentiate Equinix as the trusted center of a cloud-first world.”
