Digital Realty has agreed to purchase Blackstone's 64 percent interest in a Northern Virginia data center portfolio for $3.5 billion. This values the three facilities in the deal at a combined gross $7.8 billion, with an initial stabilized capitalization rate that exceeds 6.5 percent.
Digital Realty is using $2.3 billion in stock and $1.2 billion in cash to fund the deal.
The transaction includes two data centers in Manassas and one in Sterling — all of which are fully leased and offer 96 megawatts of power each. Three different investment-grade hyperscale customers operate space at the properties. Two of these facilities are expected to stabilize during the first half of next year, with stabilization on the other following in the first six months of 2028.
Digital Realty said that the move will expand its footprint in Northern Virginia, where its full portfolio in the area currently shows 15 move-in-ready data centers. The new properties host 15-year leases, 3.6 percent annual rent escalators and customer credit rating blended averages of AA-.
"This transaction is expected to be accretive to Core FFO per share in each of 2027 and 2028, as development is completed and rents commence," Matt Mercier, chief financial officer of Digital Realty, said in a statement.
"We also expect it to be accretive to contractual organic rent growth and portfolio quality, given long term leases with premier hyperscale customers in newly constructed assets, in the largest and most sought-after data center market. We believe that our execution to date and the recently announced strategic transactions, position Digital Realty to extend its growth trajectory."
The move also marks an expansion of the cloud and data center platform's partnership with Blackstone, which originally formed a joint venture together in 2023. This was focused on spending $7 billion over several years to develop four hyperscale data centers in three metro areas across roughly 500 megawatts of total IT load. The locations of focus were in Northern Virginia and overseas markets, including Frankfurt, Germany and Paris, France.
The expectation is that the new deal between Blackstone and Digital Realty will be completed today, subject to closing conditions.
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