Vantage brings in $6.4 billion to drive data centre growth

The investment comes from vehicles managed by DigitalBridge and Silver Lake. The latter was Vantage Data Centers' original financial backer when it bought its first data centre back in 2010, before selling out to a consortium including DigitalBridge in 2017. The purchase price was not disclosed, but rumours at the time put it at about $1 billion.

Fast forward just over half a decade and Vantage Data Centers has grown significantly. And it has plans to further build on its position.

This new equity investment comes fairly hot on the heels of another funding injection. In September the company announced that Australian pension fund AustralianSuper would contribute €1.5 billion (around $1.6 billion) in exchange for a "significant minority stake" in Vantage Data Centers EMEA. "Together, AustralianSuper and DigitalBridge-sponsored vehicles will support Vantage’s expansion and development of hyperscale data centers across EMEA," the firm noted at the time.

Now the Vantage can broaden those growth plans.

"These investments accelerate and extend Vantage's strategic capabilities across North America and EMEA to partner with global hyperscalers in meeting unprecedented cloud and AI demand," Vantage said this week.

Indeed, customer demand is only going in one direction, making the data centre space a hot option for investors. You could argue that's why Silver Lake is buying back in.

"We are proud of what we pioneered when we launched Vantage, and we are thrilled to invest and partner again with this exceptional management team alongside DigitalBridge to drive the next generation of energy-efficient, hyperscale data center leadership," Silver Lake said, in a canned quote attributed to Greg Mondre, co-CEO and managing partner, and managing director Lee Wittlinger.

DigitalBridge is becoming something of a household name in the telecoms space, in no small part thanks to its investments in the towers space. Eighteen months ago it famously partnered with Brookfield in Deutsche Telekom's €17.5 billion GD Towers stake sale, shortly after picking up Telenet's passive infrastructure business in Belgium and announcing the $11 billion acquisition of Dutch data centre operator Switch.

"We believe the combination of DigitalBridge's unparalleled insight into the digital infrastructure landscape and Silver Lake's technology focus creates a unique partnership to further enable Vantage's strategic expansion and long-term growth plan," said Jon Mauck, senior managing director at DigitalBridge and leader of its data centre investment strategy. "Vantage is a critical partner to the leading cloud and technology platforms globally and is well positioned to continue to support accelerating adoption of cloud- and AI-based technologies."

Vantage owns or controls 25 sites in North America and EMEA with a combined three gigawatts-plus of expected capacity. It is working on a $30 billion investment plan, based on what it describes as its "strategic land bank." That's a hefty spending plan, but one investors are clearly keen to back, given the market opportunity.

Since it launched a dozen or so years ago, Vantage has undergone rapid growth. As well as building up its business in North America and EMEA, the company expanded into the Asia-Pacific in 2021, acquiring data centres from Agile and later PCCW. It added the Africa portion of its EMEA business that same year when it began construction of its first campus on the continent in Johannesburg. It now has 32 hyperscale data centre campuses – either operational or under development – across five continents. And clearly there is more to come.