GIC, Equinix team up for US$1bn data centre JV in Japan

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Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and data centre specialist Equinix have signed an initial joint venture worth more than US$1bn to develop and operate data centres in Japan.

The JV features two initial facilities in Tokyo and another asset in Osaka, which will serve hyperscale tenants including the world’s largest cloud service provider, the company said.

“Japan is a strategic country for regional hyperscale expansion, and the demand for data center capacity in the Tokyo and Osaka markets has outstripped supply,” said Jabez Tan, head of research at Structure Research.

“Through this new joint venture, Equinix and GIC will be a top provider of new data center capacity for the world’s largest hyperscale companies seeking to expand in these two strategic markets – leveraging Equinix for both their core workload and interconnection requirements.”

The three facilities will provide 138 megawatts (MW) of power capacity to the Osaka and Tokyo markets once fully built-out.

Equinix already has a foothold in Japan, with 13 data centres and more than 500 employees in the country.

Under the agreement, GIC will own an 80% equity interest in the JV, which will take the form of a limited liability partnership. Equinix will own the remaining 20% stake.

“Hybrid and multicloud have emerged as the clear IT architecture of choice, and Equinix is continuing its efforts to satisfy both the interconnection and core workload needs of the top hyperscale and cloud companies powering this infrastructure,” said Charles Meyers, president and CEO at Equinix.

“Following our successful partnership with GIC on the initial xScale data center joint venture in Europe announced last year, we are now continuing our partnership with the formation of a new joint venture in Japan.”

The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year.

The deal comes after GIC and Equinix teamed up for a JV to develop and operate data centres in Europe.

In January this year, GIC entered into a US$500m joint venture  with Hong Kong-listed logistics property platform ESR to invest in logistics properties in China.

In other data centre deals, Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital Partners teamed up with data centre specialist Centrin Data to establish and manage a portfolio of hyper-scale data centres in China last November.

In July last year, Australian-listed Lendlease and an unnamed institutional investor have teamed up to invest US$1bn in data centres across Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.