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The founder and CEO of one of the largest artificial intelligence data center landlords in the country left his job four months ago, and new details are emerging about his multibillion-dollar departure agreement.
Private equity giant Blackstone, the parent company of QTS, paid $3B to buy Chad Williams' shares in the company as part of the CEO's March departure, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
The decision was made after the board members determined there needed to be new leadership to ensure QTS' future growth. Williams was replaced by co-CEOs David Robey and Tag Greason atop the $60B data center development firm.
Greason and Robey plan to push a more aggressive global strategy and eliminate some of the red tape for more steady growth, according to Bloomberg. With Williams' departure, the company also unveiled a new logo.
Blackstone acquired the data center developer in 2021 in a $10B deal. The deal was executed by subsidiaries Blackstone Infrastructure Partners and BREIT.
Since the acquisition, QTS' development pipeline went from $1B to roughly $25B, and its data center capacity went from 400 megawatts to 3 gigawatts, according to Bloomberg. The growth came as Big Tech's artificial intelligence push has supercharged the data center development sector in recent years.
Earlier this month, QTS landed a $1.5B loan to refinance properties in Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia. The loan was originated by seven major banking institutions and is backed by the two fully-leased, single-tenant data centers.
The company owns data centers in 17 states, encompassing roughly 9M SF of real estate. The company has also developed three data centers in Europe. QTS Realty Trust was founded by Williams in 2005.
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