Goldman Sachs has extended the deadline for its auction of Australian hyperscale data center company AirTrunk to New Year's Day.

AirTrunk is expected to be fought over by Aussie investment firm Macquarie Group, and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), a pension fund and one of the largest institutional investors in Canada.

OMERS has partnered with Chicago based investor IPI Partners to make its bid, while Macquarie is bidding via funds manager Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets, the Australian Financial Review reports.

Goldman Sachs started reaching out to bidders back in September on behalf of the owners (Goldman Sachs is also one of the company's investors). According to the Financial Review, the Australian hyperscaler is expected to be going for around AU$3bn (US$2bn).

AirTrunk Sydney
AirTrunk's building in Sydney – AirTrunk

AirTrunk’s billion-dollar expansion

The Australian data center firm has multiple projects underway.

With the backing of its investors, TPG and Goldman Sachs, AirTrunk is currently expanding its Sydney campus for a price tag of around AU$1bn (US$680m). SYD2 will be AirTrunk’s third data center in Australia and join SYD1 in Sydney and MEL1 in Melbourne, both have been operational since 2017.

AirTrunk is also building in Singapore with its 60MW SNG1 facility in Loyang. SNG1 has cost the hyperscale company SG$450 million (US$332m). And, the company is refitting a building in Hong Kong as a data center, it will be a smaller project than AirTrunk has done previously as it will only have an IT capacity of around 20MW.

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