Blackstone nears deal to acquire AirTrunk data centres
Blackstone nearing deal to acquire AirTrunk for $17.7B.
In a battle for the clouds, Blackstone is nearing a deal to acquire AirTrunk and its data centres for $17.7B.
According to Bloomberg, Blackstone wants to acquire Australian data centre operator AirTrunk for A$20 billion (SG$17.7B).
Final details are being negotiated and a transaction could be signed as early as this week.
AirTrunk in Asia
AirTrunk has data centres in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Malaysia.
In July, AirTrunk launched the first 50MW phase of its 150MW JHB1 data centre in Johor - 15MW Ready For Service, according to a tip.
What stands out about its Johor data centre is a new liquid cooling design that AirTrunk claims resulted from 5 years of R&D.
Custom liquid cooling
AirTrunk had apparently come up with a unique liquid cooling-centric design for data centres with:
- Its own piping, valve design.
- Their own 400kW cooling distribution units (CDU).
- Liquid load banks as thermal buffers for more reliability.
Some readers have pointed out that operators such as OVH have been refining their own liquid cooling tech in its data centres for a long time.
Still, I'll submit that while liquid cooling isn't new and the concepts are well understood, scaling it for hyperscale data centres efficiently and safely is a work in progress.
Indeed, the first phase of JHB1 will only feature 20MW of liquid cooling - so air-cooling is still predominantly featured.
A battle for the clouds
The impending Blackstone deal would be one of the largest data centre deals in recent history.
In 2023, KKR acquired a 20% stake in Singtel Nxera and its rapidly growing portfolio of data centres in the Southeast Asia region.
Modern data centres require a lot of money to build but could offer huge rewards for investors due to our insatiable demand for digital infrastructure.
Is there room for smaller data centres?
One observation I'll make is how all of AirTrunk's data centres are massive facilities. In fact, the majority are >100MW.
Is there room for smaller data centres? Some of you seemed to think so after I wrote about the incongruence of ever-larger data centres and sustainability last week here.
What do you think?
