Australia’s Aware Super Takes $300M Stake in Vantage Data Centers’ APAC Business

Australian pension fund Aware Super has agreed to invest $300 million in the joint venture led by DigitalBridge that indirectly owns the Asia Pacific platform of Vantage Data Centers.

Aware Super’s acquisition of a minority stake in the JV will help support Vantage’s pipeline of opportunities in APAC, the companies said Tuesday in a release. The news comes less than a month after Japan’s Softbank announced a deal to acquire DigitalBridge, which controls data centre operators Vantage and Yondr Group, in an all-cash deal valuing the NYSE-listed digital infrastructure investment firm at $4 billion.

Vantage has more than 10 data centres across Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Vantage APAC president Jeremy Deutsch said the platform’s business in the region is growing at an “unprecedented pace”.

“We appreciate the confidence our investors have in our platform and in our ability to execute at scale to deliver digital infrastructure to the world’s most innovative technology companies,” Deutsch said. “With partners like DigitalBridge and Aware Super, we are well positioned to expand our APAC portfolio to meet AI and cloud demand in markets that matter most to our customers.”

Fund Fans Out

Sydney-based Aware Super said the latest transaction lifts the A$210 billion ($141 billion) fund’s total investments in digital infrastructure to beyond A$6 billion, representing more than a quarter of its total infrastructure portfolio.

“This is a compelling opportunity for Aware Super to gain exposure to the digitalisation-driven high-growth APAC data centre market, with the region covering 60 percent of the world’s population and projected to be the strongest growing cloud region,” said Mark Hector, head of infrastructure.

Aware Super and DigitalBridge previously co-invested $500 million in US data centre operator Switch in 2023 after the US firm and Australia’s IFM Investors took Switch private in 2022 in an $11 billion deal.

The pension fund’s other digital infrastructure investments include Vocus, a leading specialist fibre and network solutions provider in Australia; 2Degrees, New Zealand’s third-largest telecom; and euNetworks, a European bandwidth infrastructure provider.

DigitalBridge Expansion

Florida-based DigitalBridge controls data centre platforms in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Formerly known as Colony Capital, the company took on the DigitalBridge brand in 2021 to signal its focus on data centres and other digital infrastructure.

Colony had acquired Digital Bridge in 2019 for $325 million. That deal came after DigitalBridge had teamed up with the Public Sector Pension Investment Board and TIAA to purchase Vantage Data Centers in 2017 for a reported $1 billion.

DigitalBridge boosted its Asia presence in 2021 with the purchase of Hong Kong-based PCCW’s data centre business in Greater China and Malaysia for $750 million. In 2022, DigitalBridge acquired a stake in Malaysia’s AIMS Data Centres for $438 million. 

After DigitalBridge teamed up with Canadian pension fund manager La Caisse to acquire Yondr for $5.8 billion in a deal that closed last July, Vantage teamed up with Singapore’s GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to buy a Yondr data centre campus in Malaysia for $1.6 billion in a purchase announced in September.

Vantage last month announced that the fourth facility at the company’s first Cyberjaya campus in Malaysia was operational, completing the development of the 31-megawatt KUL1, while the 436MW KUL2 campus is still under construction.