Blackstone To Buy Asia Pacific Data Center Platform AirTrunk In A$24 Bln Deal

(RTTNews) - Alternative asset manager Blackstone, Inc. (BX) announced Wednesday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AirTrunk, an Asia Pacific data center platform, from Macquarie Asset Management and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, for an implied enterprise value of over A$24 billion.

The transaction is subject to approval from the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.

The funds managed by Blackstone Real Estate Partners, Blackstone Infrastructure Partners, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, and Blackstone's private equity strategy for individual investors, along with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board or CPP Investments have entered into the deal.

Blackstone said the deal is the largest investment in the Asia Pacific region.

AirTrunk is the largest data center platform in the Asia Pacific region, with presence in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore. It has more than 800MW of capacity and owns land that can support over 1GW of future growth across the region.

Prior to AirTrunk, Blackstone's portfolio consisted of $55 billion of data centers including facilities under construction, along with over $70 billion in prospective pipeline development.

Jon Gray, President and Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone, said, "AirTrunk is another vital step as Blackstone seeks to be the leading digital infrastructure investor in the world across the ecosystem, including data centers, power and related services."

It is expected that there will be around $1 trillion of capital expenditures in the United States over the next five years to build and facilitate new data centers, with another $1 trillion of capital expenditures outside the United States.