In digital infra news this week we cover a number of APAC expansions, deep-dive into European regulation and policy, and look at the growing challenges facing the US market, despite its continued rise.

The big story: Infra funds at the forefront.

Infrastructure funds stole the spotlight this week, with data centre IPI Partner’s sold to Blue Owl Capital, and Ares Management snapping up real estate investor GCP International.

Investors are increasingly favouring management firms that offer a wide of asset classes and investment strategies, prompting asset managers to broaden their portfolios through acquisitions.

Given the tremendous demand for digital infrastructure, its attractiveness as an asset class for funds with limited exposure means specialist investors are going to attract a premium price tag – consolidation is only expected to continue.

In addition to this week’s deals, recent examples include BlackRock’s deal for Global Infrastructure Partners, LPL Financial Holdings’ acquisition of Altria Wealth Solutions and General Atlantic acquiring Actis.

APAC

This week saw a number of data centre operators expand into new markets, including GDS securing land for its site in Singapore, Damac-backed Edgnex revealing plans to invest US$1bn in Thai data centres, ZData buying land in Johor and EdgeConneX hiring Macquarie veteran Masahiko Inoue to plot a path into Japan.

Inoue will have to contend with a fundamental shift in where Japan’s data centres are being built. Find out more about how and why in this op-ed from our partners at Digital Garden.

In addition to Inoue, Equinix top exec Jeremy Deutsch also found himself with a new role this week, as he joined Vantage Data Centers to lead its APAC expansion. While these firms are all growing within APAC, HMC Capital hopes to add its name to the list. It revealed it was under due diligence to acquire various data centre assets, including Global Switch Australia.

Elsewhere we covered a prediction that Malaysia’s digital economy set to exceed 25% of GDP by 2025, and also looked at a new cable landing station coming to Indonesia.

Europe

In Europe, the focus on digital infrastructure being paired with sustainability and future economic growth continued this week. The EU Commission allocated US$920 million for digital connectivity infrastructure, and the UK announced a new scheme to support investment in long-term renewables storage.

Summarising the EU’s view on digital infra investments we covered Draghi’s blueprint for enduring economic dominance, we looked back to ask what the UK’s designation of data centres as CNI will really mean for the industry, and explored Brussels think tank CERRE’s views on AI, data flows, and digital supply chains governance.

We also published the key findings and takeaways from our roundtable session with UK industry visionaries, asking how we balance AI growth with sustainability objectives.

Within the data centre industry itself, we saw Aruba launch a $300m data centre campus in Rome, H.I.G. Capital back new European data centre firm PolarDC and ARGAN finalised the sale of a data centre sale to Invesco.

AI-cloud provider Nebius revealed plans to expand its Finnish data centre and offer an Nvidia Blackwell platform, while UK AI startup Stelia partnered wit Centersquare to accelerate enterprise AI adoption across North America and Europe.

Finally for Europe, atNorth expanded its Danish operations and appoined a former Meta and AWS exec,

Americas

We began our US coverage this week looking into reports that Cisco was set to invest in AI-cloud provider Coreweave, and ended it with news the firm has raised even more debt capital.

Other investments in digital infrastructure came in the form of DC Blox securing new funding for US$1 billion of data centre investments, FirstLight Fiber raising $120m in debt financing and AI startup TensorWave secures $43m in SAFE funding for AI compute infrastructure expansion.

A number of energy story’s broke this week as well. CoBank warned that the data centre boom threatens the US’ power supply and economic growth, and Virginia’s utility regulator also began a process to explore reforms to the way the grid serves large off-takers – with a specific focus on data centres.

We also learnt more about Google exploring nuclear power for data centres and meanwhile cloud rival Microsoft was greenlit for a $420m data centre in Ohio.

Appointment’s wise, CleanArc hired Matthew Englert as its new chief development officer, Phoenix Investors appointed a Wall Street CFO as its data centre push takes off and Australian pension fund AustralianSuper expanded its US$68bn US operations with several senior hires.

Middle East and Africa

In an interview with The Tech Capital, NED Data Centers CEO Daniel Efrati revealed the firm is working on a joint venture to build 500MW of AI data centre capacity throughout Israel. We talk about NED’s plans to create interconnected AI factories across Europe, will also diving into its subsea cable market and local operating challenges.

Other MENA stories from this week include reports that Europe could import 24GW of renewable power from North Africa and Kyriba strengthened Saudi Arabia’s digital space with a new data centre.