Alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital is expected to become the latest in a wave of investors to build a REIT focused on data centers.
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The New York-based firm plans to take the REIT public, seeding it with approximately $6.5B of its own data center assets, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news, citing anonymous sources.
A slew of data center-focused initial public offerings have been announced in recent months as investors seek to drum up cash from public markets. Those funds would support firms' efforts to flesh out their data center portfolios amid rampant demand for infrastructure to support the artificial intelligence boom.
Blue Owl reportedly plans to pursue a model similar to Blackstone’s data center REIT, which is structured as a blind pool where investors buy shares without knowing the exact assets contained.
But unlike Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust Inc., which raised $2B in its May IPO, Blue Owl’s investors would be buying into a REIT anchored by the firm’s existing assets.
Details of Blue Owl’s REIT and its IPO could change, as deliberations are ongoing at the firm, the anonymous sources told Bloomberg.
Blue Owl closed its most recent digital infrastructure fund, which will target developing and acquiring data center assets, with $7B of commitments in May, according to a release.
The dollar figure surpassed the firm's $4B goal, attracting investments from pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and family offices, among others.
Blue Owl’s potential move follows a series of similar motions by data center companies to go public again, reversing course from a yearslong trend of data center firm privatizations that began playing out in 2020.
In July, Las Vegas-based data center developer and operator Switch announced it was pursuing an IPO that could raise up to $10B and give Switch a valuation of almost $80B.
AI infrastructure developer SB Energy, which marries data centers and power generation and is backed by SoftBank, announced its IPO intentions in May, seeking a valuation of more than $50B.
Not all data center real estate IPOs have met expectations. Brookfield-backed colocation provider CSquare’s July IPO was expected to raise $1.35B but missed the mark by $300M.
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