Asia-Pacific logistics fund manager ESR has raised an initial US$1bn (€977m) for its inaugural data-centre fund with the backing of investors including sovereign wealth and pension funds.
ESR will raise a separate discretionary capital sleeve to co-invest in Data Centre Fund 1, which is expected to close the balance of the fund at the hard cap of US$1.5bn.
Additionally, the capital partners have an upsize option of an additional equity commitment of US$1.5bn, which would bring the total investment capacity to as much as US$7.5bn over time.
Jeffrey Shen and Stuart Gibson, co-founders and co-CEOs of ESR, said as the largest new economy real estate platform in Asia-Pacific, the group was looking to meet the critical need for digital infrastructure in the region.
Devashish Gupta, ESR data centres CIO, said: “The APAC data centre fund is uniquely placed to take advantage of ESR Group’s adjacencies in land, power, fibre origination, strong pipeline of recently acquired data centre specific sites.”
Diarmid Massey, ESR data centres CEO, added that ESR’s ambition was “naturally” to offset high energy consumption by aligning with its ESG strategy to refurbish, redevelop, and convert some of existing 39.8m sqm of assets into large and edge data centres.
Massey said the group would explore sustainable options through actual renewable energy generation from the rooftops.
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