Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Australia’s Goodman Group have agreed to launch a multibillion-dollar European data center business as the rise of artificial intelligence increases demand for power and storage sites.
Under the partnership, the Canadian pension fund manager and industrial real estate investment manager Goodman will invest an initial A$3.9 billion ($2.6 billion) to develop data center projects in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris.
Construction is expected to begin by the end of June next year.
Goodman shares rose 6.7% to A$31.17 as of 10:30am in Sydney after the announcement, narrowing their decline this year to 13%.
The increased use of machine learning and cloud-based technologies is driving a data center construction boom around the world and accelerating mergers and acquisitions in the data center and power industries. Alphabet Inc. on Monday agreed to buy energy developer Intersect Power LLC for $4.75 billion to bring more power to its data centers.
In November, Robin Cuda, founder and chief executive of Australian data center operator Airtrunk, described the wave of global investment in artificial intelligence as “the biggest gold rush in human history.” AirTrunk was acquired by Blackstone last year for A$24 billion. bloomberg
