Emirati conglomerate Damac Group has acquired a site in Spain to develop a €400m data centre, marking its debut in the European data centre market.
Damac, through its data centre arm Edgnex, has acquired the 240,000sqft powered land site in Madrid from ActivumSG’s Fund VII fund.
European real estate private equity manager ActivumSG acquired a site in 2022 and subsequently secured a 40MW power connection agreement before selling the site to Edgnex.
Located 15km from Madrid’s city centre, the site occupies one of the few remaining plots of land in Madrid that can be connected to a power source of the level required to fuel sizeable data centre operations feasibly, ActivumSG said.
Hussain Sajwani, founder of Damac, said: “The acquisition of this asset – our first planned data centre site in Europe – will help to plug the data centre supply-demand mismatch in Madrid and support the development of groundbreaking technologies.
“Our continued significant investment in digital infrastructure and AI reflects our deep conviction in the opportunity offered by technological innovation. This is an increasingly important part of our diversified investment portfolio and our future ambitions as a group level.”
Brian Betel, head of direct transactions at ActivumSG, said: “Our powered-land strategy provides our investors with a de-risked entry point into the mega-trend of digitalisation, which is reshaping demand for real estate globally, while helping facilitate major investment needed to deliver the infrastructure required to fuel the AI revolution.
“The 40MW power agreement secured for this site by our in-country team combined with excellent redundancy served to further differentiate this asset in what is already a severely supply-constrained local market.”
Saul Goldstein, CEO and founder of ActivumSG, said: “We pride ourselves on a flexible investment mandate and opportunity-led strategy. This sale is a testament to ActivumSG’s ability to leverage its deep local relationships, agility and execution prowess.
“While powered land investments can be technically complex, our talented team in Spain has now completed two of these transactions with outstanding results.”
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