Private Equity Bets $1 Billion on AI-Ready Data Center Buildout
I Squared Capital entered an agreement to acquire ten data centers from Cogen Fiber, a Cogent Communications Holdings subsidiary, for $225 million in cash. The facilities span 259,000 square feet across Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Missouri, Baltimore, Houston, Nashville, and Stockton, California. The Miami-based private equity firm plans to invest up to $1 billion in building and expanding U.S. data centers designed for artificial intelligence computing, with the capital earmarked for both targeted improvements and additional acquisitions.
Each facility sits near internet exchanges and offers multi-carrier connectivity. Co-founder and Managing Partner Gautam Bhandari identified location, power, and connectivity as the three variables determining long-term data center value. All acquired assets include expansion capacity and support liquid-cooling-enabled configurations, a system that uses liquid to cool computer chips. Bhandari said demand for high-density, low-latency facilities will grow as AI shifts from model training to inference, when systems are used by people and businesses daily.
I Squared oversees $60 billion in assets across global infrastructure businesses, with a portfolio of at least 90 companies in utilities, energy, environmental infrastructure, transportation, and social infrastructure. The firm employs 300 people across offices in Miami’s Brickell Financial District, Abu Dhabi, London, Munich, New Delhi, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, and Taipei. AI data centers require enormous amounts of electricity to run and cool the powerful computers that train and operate artificial intelligence systems, making power access and cooling capacity central to their viability.
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