PLANO, Texas — Read this story and more North Texas business news from our partners at the Dallas Business Journal
Private equity giant Blackstone Inc. has struck a more than half-billion-dollar deal with a DFW firm, signaling more could be to come with their business relationship.
Blackstone (NYSE: BX) provided a $600 million loan to Plano-based Aligned Data Centers LLC to support the development of a data center in West Jordan, Utah, the two companies announced March 12. In a statement, Aligned Chief Financial Officer Anubhav Raj called his firm's deal with Blackstone an "initial transaction" and mentioned future opportunities with the firm.
"The capital demands of this industry make strong financial backing crucial," Raj said. "Strategic financing partnerships focused on ingenuity and collaboration are a key advantage."
This comes as Blackstone — which became the first $1 trillion private equity manager last year — has been betting big on the rise of artificial intelligence, and thus, the real estate that fuels it, after a $10 billion takeover of major data center operator QTS in 2021, as reported by Bloomberg. The valuation of QTS has since grown to about $25 billion as Blackstone committed more money to future projects, according to the outlet.
The deal was through Blackstone's newly formed credit and insurance arm, Blackstone Credit & Insurance, or BXCI. The deal is backed by insurance accounts managed by BXCI's Infrastructure and Asset Based Credit Group.
"Aligned is one of the fastest growing data center platforms in the Americas and has a focus on sustainability — we look forward to working with the Aligned team to support their continued growth," BXCI Principal Alan Carcich said in a statement.
The firms call the Utah project — a two-story, 80-megawatt data center — Aligned's "newest and largest" data center to date. It will be the company's fourth data center in the Salt Lake City metro area.
Meanwhile, the technology company also aims to construct a two-story building with a 450,000-square-foot data center on a lot spanning 44.3 acres on the west side of North Star Road located in East Plano, the Dallas Business Journal recently reported.
The data center technology company now operates two buildings on Summit Avenue near Plano Parkway, just north of President George Bush Turnpike. One is 220,000 square feet and another is more than 300,000 square feet.
Demand for data centers in Dallas-Fort Worth and nationally has soared in recent years, and Dallas set a record in 2023 with 386 megawatts absorbed, which represents the capacity that was rented minus available capacity, according to a report from commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. Vacancies for data center space also reached an all-time low of 3.73%, and more than 1.4 million square feet of data center projects were underway in DFW at the end of 2023.
Moreover, the construction of new data centers in North Texas, one of the country's largest data center markets, continues to grow. In November 2023, Dallas-based DataBank raised $533 million to support the construction of new data centers in the area. That transaction came on the heels of almost $1.6 billion in financing announced by DataBank earlier last year.
