Partners Group Acquires EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure

Partners Group, a private equity firm based in Bar-Zug, Switzerland, has acquired EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure, an owner, operator and developer of hyperscale data centers in the US.

Partners Group did not disclose the purchase price for the acquisition. In a posted on EdgeCore’s website, Broomfield, CO-based EdgeCore described the acquisition as a “recapitalization.”

Partners has committed to invest $1.2B to “fund the acquisition and buildout of existing and future data center sites” in the US. “Partners Group is positioned to scale EdgeCore well beyond the initial commitment and target markets.“

“Partners Group brings value-add dynamics that support the growth of the EdgeCore platform and enhance the data center infrastructure and services we provide our customers,” said Tom Ray, EdgeCore CEO, in a statement.

Citing “rising demand for data centers as service providers deploy more capacity to support businesses migrating to the cloud,” Ed Diffendal, a Partners Group managing director, said in a statement that EdgeCore’s “advanced pipeline of shovel-ready assets in strategically important markets should enable rapid growth.”

Greenberg Traurig, RBC Capital Markets and Ernst % Young acted as financial advisor to EdgeCore on the transaction; Latham & Watkins, KPMG, Clifford Chance and Ropes & Gray advised Partners Group.

EdgeCore has data centers operating in four US markets, including a 348K SF, 54 MW facility in Ashburn, VA, the heart of the largest North American data center cluster in NoVa; Phoenix, where it has five data centers encompassing 1.1M SF and 170 MW of capacity ; a campus of five data centers encompassing 1M SF and 180 MW of capacity in Reno, NV; and a 540K SF data enter with 72 MW of capacity in Santa Clara, CA.

Phoenix is the hottest data center market in the US, measured in megawatts of net absorption, as overall US market absorption surges past the total demand in 2021, according to the latest data center outlook report from JLL. US market demand reached 1,087 MW in H1 2022, more than 95% of total demand in 2021.

Last week, STACK Infrastructure has announced that it will build a 230 MW-capacity data center mega-campus on a 50-acre site in Downtown Phoenix.

The developer is planning five hyperscale data center buildings encompassing 1.78M SF of data processing space at the campus, which will be known as PHXL2. Each of the server farms will range in capacity from 30 and 60 MW, and the site will have a dedicated onsite substation

STACK previously announced plans for a 150 MW data center campus in Goodyear, 20 miles west of Phoenix.

The new STACK Phoenix campus will be located near a large hub of long-haul fiber and metro network providers and will offer connectivity options to cloud player who have made Phoenix the most rapidly growing data center hub in the US.