After a thrilling week for The Tech Capital at our APAC Finance Forum in Jakarta, this week we were back to reality… for a day at least until Joao flew out to cover Touchdown in Bahrain that is!

In addition to coverage from that event, we published an in-depth look at the policy and regulation shaping Amsterdam’s data centre ecosystem, covered fresh capital-raising activity from across the globe and M&A deals aplenty.

The big story: A regulatory chokehold is suffocating Amsterdam’s data centre growth

Traditionally one of the hotspots of European data centre activity, the Amsterdam metro has experienced quite the slowdown in 2024.

Data from Synergy Research shows that Amsterdam is still the second-largest market for hyperscale capacity in Europe (after Dublin) and the Dutch capital ranks as the fourth highest for colocation revenue, outpaced by London, Frankfurt and Paris.

But in the first six months of this year data from Knight Frank and DC Byte indicates that just 6MW of new capacity was added to the market’s pipeline, 1MW of IT load went live and the market saw 0.2MW of take-up.

Faced with these troubling numbers and keen to maintain Amsterdam’s place at the top of the European data centre pecking order, leaders from Digital Realty, CyrusOne and Equinix tell The Tech Capital why government policy is to blame for Amsterdam missing out on AI-fuelled data centre growth.

Africa and Middle East

In Africa news this week a consortium of investors, led by South African private equity firm Harith General Partners, has finalised a 6.5 billion rand (US$360 million) deal to acquire an infrastructure fund holding stakes in numerous power generation assets and fibre providers Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa.

Meanwhile, Wingu Group were busy hosting Djibouti’s Prime Minister, Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed, who witnessed the opening of a new data centre and cable landing station at the company’s TO7 Technology Park.

In the Middle East, we covered the Middle East’s rise as a major concern for global connectivity, as it transforms from a digital desert to a thriving ecosystem.

China Telecom expanded into Saudi Arabia with launch of a Gulf branch and Qareeb Data Centres and Gcore also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to advance the deployment of edge data centre facilities in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

Asia Pacific

In a busy week for Australia, we covered HMC Capital revealing details of its US$1.8 billion data centre REIT IPO, and Google unveiled two new subsea cable routes as part of its Pacific Connect project.

Over in Asia, Chindata Group are in talks for a record US$2.8bn loan to fuel its Malaysian expansion as CPP Investments and Pacific AMC formed a data centre JV for South Korea.

People-move wise, the former GE Japan CEO joined DigitalBridge to bulk up Asian digital infrastructure investments and we also covered reports that India’s data centre capacity is set to surge 66% by 2026, driven by AI and 5G.

One firm seeking to benefit from this growth will be Equinix, which secured prime Mumbai real estate for its third data centre there.

Europe

In stark contrast to the dire situation in the Netherlands, French and UK firms unveiled bold data centre plans this week. First off, new UK outfit Latos Data Centres, the brainchild of telecoms veteran Mike Carlin, aims to construct 40 facilities by 2030.

In France, digital infrastructure and connectivity provider BSO announced the launch of a new 400MW AI data centre the French firm is calling Europe’s first giga-scale AI hosting infrastructure.

Elsewhere in data centre news, Google secured land for new data centres in Finland, and Data4 broke ground in $330m Greek data centre campus.

Also, Portus Data Centers Luxembourg, formerly known as European Data Hub, extended its underground data centre facility in Luxembourg’s Cloche d’Or business district.

Turning to the investment landscape, Blackstone acquired a US$1bn infrastructure loan portfolio from Santander and EQT Infrastructure IV fund has agreed to sell Malta digital infrastructure company Melita to Goldman Sachs Alternatives.

In a late result post, digital infrastructure firm Cordiant saw a 38.9% share price total return amid other Q3 highlights.

Americas

Another busy week in the Americas saw yet more billions of dollars being raised for digital infrastructure projects.

Highlights include Equinix launching a US$1.2bn green bond initiative, Anthropic raising US$4billion, and reports that CoreWeave are aiming for a US$35 billion valuation in a 2025 IPO.

In addition, Blackstone poured US$500m into Texas AI data centres, and Meta is exploring an US$800m Lebanon data centre project.

Meanwhile AMD stock saw increased institutional interest amidst analyst optimism.

Further to this news, we offered deep dives into why building a LATAM data centre supply chain is crucial in an interview with ODATA CEO Ricardo Alario and also looked at Talen and Constellation Energy’s latest legal fights to secure rules around colocated data centre load.