(Dec 23): The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Australia’s Goodman Group agreed to set up a multibillion-dollar European data centre business, as the rise of artificial intelligence drives demand for power and storage sites.
Under the partnership, the Canadian pension fund manager and Goodman, an industrial property investment manager, will initially invest A$3.9 billion to develop data centre projects in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris, the companies said in a statement Tuesday (Dec 23).
Construction is due to start by the end of June next year, they said.
Shares of Goodman jumped 6.7% to A$31.17 at 10.30am in Sydney after the announcement, trimming this year’s decline to 13%.
The increasing use of machine learning and cloud-based technologies is triggering a rush to build data centres around the world, spurring mergers and acquisitions in the data centre and power industries. Alphabet Inc on Monday agreed to buy energy developer Intersect Power LLC for US$4.75 billion in order to access more electricity for its data centres.
Robin Khuda, founder and CEO of Australian data centre operator AirTrunk, in November described the wave of global investments in artificial intelligence as “the single biggest gold rush in human history.” AirTrunk was bought by Blackstone Inc last year for A$24 billion.
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