US Data Centre Firm EdgeConneX Buys Stake in Chayora’s Mainland Platform

EdgeConneX, a US data centre firm backed by Swedish fund manager EQT, has taken a stake in Hong Kong-based developer Chayora, with the partners aiming to expand Chayora’s digital infrastructure platform across key markets in mainland China.

Chayora’s existing hyperscale, carrier-neutral data centre campus serving Beijing and a campus under development in Shanghai will complement EdgeConneX’s global footprint spanning 50 markets across four continents, the companies said Monday in a release.

While the financial details of EdgeConneX’s investment were not disclosed, the commitment is the latest milestone for Chayora after it secured $180 million in funding from UK-based fund manager Actis in 2019. Actis will remain as the majority shareholder in Chayora after the initial completion of the transaction.

“The investment in Chayora provides EdgeConneX customers with an ideal data centre partner that can support their digital infrastructure requirements in China,” said EdgeConneX CEO Randy Brouckman. “At the same time, the EdgeConneX global platform can support Chinese firms that have international requirements.”

Growing With the Mainland Market

Brouckman called the deal a “win-win for customers”, enabling EdgeConneX and Chayora to provide data centre services across a full spectrum of hyperlocal to hyperscale deployments both domestically in China and globally.

Chayora’s existing sites in Tianjin near Beijing and in Shanghai can jointly scale to over 200 megawatts of IT load with access to 100 percent renewable energy, the partners said. Chayora holds the relevant licences to operate and connect its data centres and provide cloud services.

“China represents the largest and one of the most challenging markets for global digital infrastructure users and through the team we have built in Chayora, we can address all demands, to any scale for the world’s largest data centre customers,” said Chayora Holdings CEO Oliver Jones.

China’s data centre market was valued at over $13 billion in 2020 and is forecast to reach $36.18 billion by 2026 while registering a compound annual growth rate of 19.2 percent during the 2021-26 period, according to a report from Mordor Intelligence.

Two-City Platform

Mingtiandi reported in 2019 that London-headquartered Actis’s $180 million investment, supplemented with $250 million in debt, would be used to develop a pair of hyperscale facilities within Chayora’s 2.3 million square foot (213,677 square metre) Tianjin campus, bringing the total number of hyperscale centres at the site to three, out of nine facilities that the company had achieved licences for at the location.

Chayora launched its 18MW TJ1 data centre at the Tianjin campus in October 2020 after winning certification under the Open Compute Project dedicated to openness, scale and efficiency.

Just last month, Chayora announced the launch of its 54MW, 10,000-rack Shanghai campus, which is expected to enter service in the fourth quarter of 2022.

EQT Expands New Economy Holdings

In August 2020, Stockholm-based EQT announced that its EQT Infrastructure IV fund was acquiring EdgeConneX from an investor group led by Providence Equity Partners. The fund manager said it was committed to actively supporting the platform’s accelerated growth via new market entries and material expansions of existing locations.

EQT made headlines again last month when its EQT Exeter arm announced the sale of a $6.8 billion, 70.5 million square foot portfolio of 328 industrial properties across the US. Real estate market information provider CoStar reported that the buyer was an investment group led by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.

EQT Exeter is a real estate investment manager formed by EQT and Philadelphia-based Exeter Property Group, which EQT acquired this past January for $1.9 billion.

Singapore’s Mapletree Investments had announced earlier that it spent $3 billion to acquire two portfolios totalling 141 logistics assets in the US through separate transactions in July and September. Mingtiandi reported that the Temasek Holdings-owned firm purchased at least one of the sets of warehouses from funds managed by Exeter Property, a longtime Mapletree partner.