DigitalBridge and Silver Lake are investing $6.4 billion into Vantage Data Centers.
Announced this week, the equity investment was led by investment vehicles managed by DigitalBridge Group, Inc. and Silver Lake. The deal is set to close in Q1 2024.
The investment is across North America and EMEA, with Vantage saying it will “accelerate and extend” the company’s capabilities across those geographies to meet growing cloud and AI demand.
“Vantage will continue its development of next-generation data centers, including energy-efficient and sustainable designs purpose-built for AI and large-scale cloud deployments,” the company said.
“We are delighted that Silver Lake is joining DigitalBridge to support Vantage’s continued expansion across North America and EMEA,” said Sureel Choksi, president and CEO of Vantage. “Cloud computing, AI, and related technologies are driving unprecedented demand for digital infrastructure. The market opportunity in front of us is extraordinary, and we are excited to chart our next phase of growth with two premier investors who have been great partners to us and have an unmatched understanding of our global technology customers and their infrastructure needs.”
Vantage owns or controls 25 sites in North America and EMEA totaling more than 3GW of expected capacity. It also operates a number of sites across APAC.
“We are excited about supporting the next chapter of Vantage’s growth in partnership with Silver Lake,” added Jon Mauck, senior managing director at DigitalBridge, who leads the company’s data center investment strategy. “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. 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.”
Silver Lake launched Vantage in 2010 as a single data center campus on a former Intel site in Santa Clara, California. Digital Bridge acquired Vantage in 2017. Colony Capital acquired Digital Bridge in 2019 and rebranded the whole company to DigitalBridge in 2021.
The new investment is incremental to the recently announced €1.5 billion ($1.6bn) to be invested by AustralianSuper in Vantage EMEA.
DigitalBridge first announced it intended to sell a minority stake in Vantage in March 2023, and in April formed an investment consortium for Vantage EMEA operations featuring MEAG and Infranity.
“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,” said Greg Mondre, co-CEO and managing partner, and Lee Wittlinger, managing director, of Silver Lake. “Silver Lake is committed to bringing to bear the depth and breadth of our specialized expertise across the technology landscape to strengthen Vantage’s partnerships with the world’s biggest and most sophisticated technology companies and continue to meet their most challenging data center needs.”
