Blackstone Data Center Operator Considers Singapore REIT IPO

A Blackstone-owned data center operator could form a real estate investment trust in Singapore.

AirTrunk, the Australian firm that Blackstone bought last year, is exploring options including a potential REIT listing in the Southeast Asian nation, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

AirTrunk has purportedly been in initial talks with prospective advisors about a possible REIT initial public offering that could fetch more than $1 billion. The firm could be listed in Singapore as soon as next year if Blackstone and AirTrunk decide to move forward with the process.

Blackstone, in partnership with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, acquired AirTrunk last year for AU$24 billion (nearly $16.1 billion), breaking its previous record deal in the Asia-Pacific market set in 2022 with the AU$8.9 billion (almost $6 billion) purchase of Crown Resorts. AirTrunk remains the region’s biggest operator of data centers with outposts in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

With the data center market globally continuing to grow, Singapore stands to remain a major player in the sphere. The country also attracts many real estate investment trusts; about 10 percent of the stock exchange’s market capitalization is made up of REITs. This year, the Singapore stock market saw its biggest listing in eight years with the $773 million initial public offering of a data center REIT linked to Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone company.

Blackstone and AirTrunk, meanwhile, are also deepening their data center roots on the other side of the Asian continent.

In October, news broke that Blackstone is joining forces with Saudi Arabian state-backed artificial intelligence company Humain on a $3 billion effort to build data centers across the kingdom. That project will be developed through AirTrunk. Details around where the firms plan to build the data centers haven’t been revealed, though the commitment serves as further evidence of Saudi Arabia’s increased AI investment as investors around the world continue to go all-in on the burgeoning sector.

— Chris Malone Méndez