Well the summer slump (if there ever was one) is most certainly over for digital infrastructure investors across the globe. This week we covered a trio of story’s relating to American Tower’s withdrawal from its APAC investments, stories around DigitalBridge-backed Switch planning some serious capital raising and the UK celebrating significant investments in its digital economy.

The BIG Story: DigitalBridge, IFM-backed Switch considers IPO, potentially valuing data centre firm at $40bn

US data centre operator Switch is reportedly exploring an initial public offering (IPO) that could value the firm at $40 billion, including debt.

Founded in 2000 by technology entrepreneur Rob Roy, Switch has grown to become a major player in the data centre industry and was taken private by DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG) and IFM Investors for $11 billion in 2022, in what is still one of the largest deals in the sector to date.

The Nevada company boasts a client roster that includes tech giants like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL), as well as other enterprises like logistics giant FedEx (NYSE: FDX).

Later in the week, Switch revealed it had received US$5 billion in debt financing to expand its data centre platform.

The deal includes US$4.25 billion through a sustainability-linked borrowing base facility and an expanded corporate revolving credit facility upsized to US$770 million.

The firm says this new capital strategically positions it for growth at the forefront of enterprise, hyperscale cloud and AI opportunities.

APAC

In APAC data centre news  Sinar Mas, LG and KIDA have teamed up on a $300 million data centre for Jakarta, STT GDC Indonesia broke ground on a second data centre facility and a US/Japan joint venture between CyrusOne and KEP broke ground on a Japanese data centre, planning a $7bn investment.

In India, Yotta and Telangana plan to launch a supercomputer and AI data centre in Hyderabad and Tower Semiconductor and Adani Group revealed plans to invest $10bn in a semiconductor project. ST Telemedia Global Data Centres launched a $3.2bn expansion in India, and CapitaLand Investment revealed it is aiming to raise $250 million for data centre expansion in the country.

In Australia, data centre operator NEXTDC announced a $500m capital raising for Asia-wide expansion, and later in the week announced plans for a $1.9 billion loan. Its government passed a law that introduces mandatory climate reporting by early 2025 for companies earning more than AUS$500 million, and we caught up with Macquarie Data Centres CEO David Hirst to find out the big trends impacting the market.

American Towers APAC business shrunk significantly this week. We found out Brookfield’s plans for its Indian tower platform as it closed its US$2.5 billion deal to acquire the ATC India business, with the private equity giant launching a new brand, Altius.

Earlier in the week American Tower announced the sale of its Australian business to Waveconn and its New Zealand business to Connexa.

Europe

The big news coming out of Europe this week was centred on the UK market, where data centres were designated critical national infrastructure and a new $US5 billion project was announced for Hertfordshire, just north of London.

The day before, AWS revealed plans to invest $US10.5 billion in its UK data centre and cloud business.

Elsewhere, Brookfield’s Data4 launched a US$330m Athens data centre campus as part of its $8bn European expansion and Munich-based Data Center Partners launched with $660m in assets across the DACH region.

In Sweden EcoDataCenter bought 20 acres to build new 240MW data centre campus, and Conapto’s new data centre increased its Stockholm capacity by 200%.

Reports surfaced that TIM, Retelit and Nextalia are exploring a purchase of BT’s data centres in Italy, and Infranity secured $1.75bn for its climate-focused debt fund.

In M&A news, EXA Infrastructure is set to acquire Bulgarian telecommunications firm GCN, and Ramboll will purchases UK-based data centre consultancy i3 Solutions Group.

Africa & Middle East

In Africa, the tiny island nation of Cabo Verde secured $330m in EU funding for digital and energy infrastructure development, and Actis drew closer to closing its US$355 million tower deal with South Africa’s Telkom.

More news is likely to break from the continent soon if certain challenges can be overcome as Africa’s data centres aim for 2.5GW capacity.

In the Middle East Dubai AI Campus is partnering with Google Cloud to propel AI startup growth in the region.

Central and South America

Latin American news was very much focused around Brazil this week. We started on Monday catching up with Elea Data Centers Allesandro Lombardi as the operator rebranded. Lombardi told us all about why the market is poised for significant growth, but even he couldn’t have predicted the scale of DigitalBridge-backed Scala Data Centers plans to build a $90bn mega ‘AI City’ campus in Southern Brazil.

According to Scala, the campus has the potential to reach 4.7GW of capacity.

AWS also revealed plans to invest US$1.8 billion in Brazil, as it seeks to expand its cloud infrastructure in the country.

The other story from the region was  SummitIG and Neutral Networks launching a new venture, SierraIG to expand dark fibre in Mexico’s data centre markets.

North America

In the US this week, the White House summoned tech giants to tackle AI’s soaring energy demands, and we saw institutional investors adjust their positions in Equinix.

In investment news, Semiconductor firm AMI is set to receive major investment from THL Partners, Sam Altman-backed startup Exowatt raised $20m in seed capital to combat data centre power consumption and  Soluna Holdings secured US$25 million for its own data centre expansion.

Both Manulife-backed Serverfarm and DataBank expanded with massive half-GW data centre campuses, with both facilities being based in Texas.