Brazilian firm Scala Data Centers has secured new financing to fund its data center roll-out.
The DigitalBridge-owned company this week announced the successful completion of $500 million in structured financing.
The investment includes $250 million from Coatue Tactical Solutions and $250m from the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO).
The funds will be used to accelerate Scala's expansion across Latin America to support the compounding growth of cloud and AI.
"We are thrilled to welcome Coatue and IMCO and honored by their choice of Scala," said Marcos Peigo, CEO and co-founder of Scala Data Centers. "Their support is a powerful endorsement of our vision and the relentless dedication of our team. This investment and their partnership will allow Scala to further accelerate our development of next-generation infrastructure to support the continued adoption of cloud and AI technologies in the region."
Founded in 2020 after DigitalBridge acquired facilities from Brazilian IT firm UOL Diveo, Scala has invested around $1.6bn in hyperscale data centers across Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Colombia. The company expects its data center portfolio to reach 500MW over the next five years, and recently announced plans for a gigawatt-scale campus in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
Technology-focused investment firm Coatue has previously invested in GPU cloud provider (and former cryptofirm) CoreWeave across multiple rounds, GPU cloud company Together AI, crypto/AI firm Hut8, AI chip companies Cerebras and SiFive, and generative AI firms Stability.ai, Hugging Face, and Scale, as well as several battery companies.
"Scala Data Centers has emerged as a regional leader in hyperscale data centers and is at the forefront of the digital revolution in Latin America," said Malachi Price, partner at Coatue.
Our investment reflects our belief in Scala's ability to capture the AI opportunity and drive further digitization in the region. We are excited to support Scala's mission to provide cutting-edge, sustainable data center solutions," added Robert Yin, partner at Coatue.
Canadian investment firm IMCO has previously invested in DataBank (another DigitalBridge platform) as well as European fiber firm euNetworks.
"As a long-term investor, IMCO seeks sustainability and growth as key investment attributes for our digital infrastructure portfolio. Scala has this rare combination and represents the kind of world-class asset IMCO invests in," said Fred Robert, managing director, Digital Infrastructure, IMCO. "Leveraging abundant hydropower in Brazil, Scala positions itself as an industry leader in sustainability within the data center sector. We expect this differentiator to drive its continued success with hyperscalers in the region."
