I Squared Capital is acquiring a portfolio of 10 US data centre facilities for $225m (€193.4m) to seed a newly created data centre platform, with plans to commit up to $1bn to fund the platform’s future growth.
The global infrastructure manager said the seed portfolio being acquired from Cogent Fiber includes roughly 53MW of installed power capacity and 259,000sqft of colocation space across nine US markets, including Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Once the transaction completes, I Squared said it will establish a new, standalone operating platform to own, operate and grow the business. The plan involves committing up to $1bn to build the platform through targeted capital investment, customer-led expansion and additional acquisitions, the manager added.
Gautam Bhandari, co-founder, managing partner and global CIO, I Squared Capital, said: “Location, power, and connectivity are the three variables that determine a data center’s long-term value, and these facilities have all three in markets where new supply is severely constrained.
“As AI moves from the training phase — where models are built — to the inference phase, where they are used by people and businesses every day, demand for high-density, low-latency facilities like these will only grow.”
Bhandari added that the transaction is consistent with I Squared’s approach to building infrastructure platforms from the ground up by “acquiring strategically located assets and investing the capital and operational expertise needed to unlock their full potential”.
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