Blackstone, Digital Realty Establish a $7B Data Center JV

Digital Realty and Blackstone announced a $7 billion joint venture to develop four hyperscale data centers in three metro areas across two continents.

The developments are expected to support approximately 500 megawatts of total IT load upon full build out of all campuses. Blackstone will acquire an 80% ownership interest in the joint venture for approximately $700 million of initial capital contributions, while Digital Realty will maintain a 20% interest. Digital Realty will manage the development and day-to-day operations of the joint venture.

The locations for the data centers are in Frankfurt, Germany; Paris, France; and Northern Virginia. The estimated development costs are $7 billion over several years. The locations together will support 10 data centers and about 500 megawatts of IT load capacity. Currently, 46 megawatts are under construction, of which a third is pre-leased. The remaining planned capacity is in various phases of pre-construction and will be developed to meet customer demand.

The joint venture is scheduled to close in two stages over the course of the first half of 2024, subject to certain regulatory and other approvals, as well as other customary closing conditions.

Blackstone has gone all-in on data centers as an investment, starting in 2021 when it privatized QTS Realty Trust in a deal valued at $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal noted, and has since increased QTS’s development pipeline to more than $15 billion from $1 billion.

“Data centers are experiencing once-in-a-generation demand growth, driven by cloud adoption and the AI revolution,” said Blackstone President and COO Jon Gray in prepared remarks. “Digital infrastructure is one of our highest conviction investment themes as a firm, and this transaction with a trusted data center operator in Digital Realty is another example of how we are investing behind this trend.”