Goldman Sachs commits $500m to form data center infrastructure platform

Goldman Sachs commits $500m to form data center infrastructure platform

The Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division (GS MBD) has partnered with a seasoned management team, led by long-time data center industry executive Scott Peterson, to form Global Compute Infrastructure LP (Global Compute), a newly established global data center infrastructure platform.

Goldman Sachs said it has initially committed to fund up to $500 million of equity capital, primarily from its infrastructure fund, West Street Infrastructure Partners III, LP (WSIP III), to enable approximately $1.5 billion in near-term investments deployed across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The founding Global Compute management team is led by CEO Scott Peterson, the former Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Digital Realty with over 18 years of data center industry experience and over 30 years in the real estate investment arena.

”During his tenure at Digital Realty from 2004 to 2018, Scott led all investment activity and was responsible for $17 billion in total deal volume across both M&A and organic development,” said the company in a statement.

“We see a tremendous opportunity in the data center space driven by increasing computing and storage demand..”

“We are incredibly excited about partnering with Scott and the Global Compute team,” said Leonard Seevers, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. “We see a tremendous opportunity in the data center space driven by increasing computing and storage demand and we believe the Global Compute team, backed by the global resources of Goldman Sachs, is uniquely positioned to deliver world class solutions to meet that demand.”

Global Compute, the new data center infrastructure platform, intends to acquire, develop and operate data center assets across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America and to meet the growing compute, storage, connectivity and colocation deployment needs of the world’s largest technology companies.

Consistent with this strategy, on October 17, 2020, Global Compute signed an agreement to acquire ATM S.A. (ATM), the data center and communications infrastructure business in Poland from a consortium of funds managed by MCI Capital, the technology-focused private equity in CEE, and Mezzanine Management, the mezzanine fund in the region.

“Goldman Sachs is the perfect partner for us as we pursue global investment opportunities in the data infrastructure space,” according to Scott Peterson, CEO of Global Compute. “Our combined global pedigrees and networks, together with GS MBD’s access to ample growth capital, will allow the Global Compute platform to not only serve the critical needs of our customers around the world, but also create and unlock value for our partners. Our initial investment in ATM S.A. is an ideal illustration of this collaboration. We are extremely enthusiastic about our partnership with Goldman Sachs enabling us to provide creative solutions for our global customers.”