In a statement, Blackstone said the agreement is capitalising on the estimated US$1 trillion of capital expenditures in the United States and another US$1 trillion of capital expenditures outside the country over the next five years to build and facilitate new data centres.

Blackstone has invested in other data centre companies including as owner of QTS, Coreweave, and Digital Realty.

It is also an investor in power and utility companies such as renewables developer Invenergy in the US.

Blackstone said the acquisition is the “largest investment in the Asia Pacific region.”

It is also the largest deal in Australia this year.

The deal is subject to approval from the Australian foreign investment review board.

“AirTrunk is another vital step as Blackstone seeks to be the leading digital infrastructure investor in the world across the ecosystem, including data centres, power, and related services,” said Blackstone president and chief operating officer Jon Gray.

“Digital infrastructure is experiencing unprecedented demand driven by the AI revolution as well as the broader digitisation of the economy,” say Blackstone infrastructure global head Sean Klimczak and Blackstone real estate global co-head Nadeem Meghji.

“Prior to AirTrunk, Blackstone’s portfolio consisted of US$55 billion of data centres including facilities under construction, along with over US$70 billion in prospective pipeline development,” they added.

“We look forward to partnering with the outstanding AirTrunk management team to further accelerate its growth.”

“This transaction evidences the strength of the AirTrunk platform in a strong performing sector as we capture the next wave of growth from cloud services and AI and support the energy transition in Asia Pacific,” said AirTrunk founder and CEO Robin Khuda.

Previously, Bloomberg reported that AirTrunk was reportedly up for sale at A$12 billion last January.

A month later, Blackstone announced interest in AirTrunk. Then, it made a bid in June with companies DigitalBridge and GIP to make the deal.

AirTrunk this year commenced the construction of its 20 megawatt (MW) data centre OSK1 in West Osaka. In May, it opened its second data centre in Tokyo, TOK2, scalable to over 110 MW.

It then commenced operations in Malaysia, following the opening of its flagship Malaysian 150 MW hyperscale data cenre in Johor Bahru (JHB1).

AirTrunk is a data centre platform based in the Asia Pacific region with a presence in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore.