- What CPP Investments has teamed up with Equinix and GIC to buy land for U.S. data centres
- Why The pension plan wants to capitalize on the growing interest in hyperscale data centres
- What next CPP has a 37.5% equity share in the venture.
CPP Investments is bullish about a joint partnership with Equinix to develop data centres in the white-hot U.S. market.
Equinix, one of the largest colocation data-centre providers globally with facilities in 33 countries, has partnered with CPP Investments and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC on a long-term US$15bn (C$20.3bn) joint venture to build data centres in the U.S.
The venture will buy land to build hyperscale data-centre facilities, with individual power capacities exceeding 100 megawatts. The properties are expected to add some 1.5 gigawatts of capacity to Equinix’s U.S. operations.
For its part, CPP, which has data-centre interests in several Asia-Pacific markets including Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, said it wants to leverage its existing partnership with Equinix to capitalize on the growing demand for data centres stateside.
“The [joint venture with Equinix and GIC] addresses increasing demand from hyperscale companies to support growing AI and cloud innovation,” a CPP Investments spokesperson told Green Street News. “The goal is to accelerate the development of state-of-the-art hyperscale data centers, providing an opportunity to invest at scale in the U.S. data-center market.”
Past Equinix clients include Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon Web Services.
CPP and GIC each will own a 37.5% equity share in the venture, with Equinix controlling the remaining 25%. The parties have made equity commitments, and the venture expects to take on debt to boost its capital pool to more than US$15bn.
CPP said the arrangement makes sense given the rising interest in data centres. The pension plan has invested in Equinix’s public equity since 2021.
“So we know the company well, and we have done several transactions through the years with GIC,” the spokesperson said.
Last month, CPP partnered with Blackstone to buy AirTrunk, which operates data centres in the Asia-Pacific region.
