CPP Investments and Equinix to Acquire Data Center Firm atNorth
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Equinix have agreed to acquire atNorth, a Nordic data center provider, in a deal valued around $4 billion. The acquisition is intended to meet strong demand from AI, hyperscale, and enterprise clients. The move reflects a broader trend of significant capital investment in the physical infrastructure required to power AI development.
The deal sees atNorth acquired from private markets firm Partners Group, which originally bought the company in 2022. Under Partners Group's ownership, atNorth expanded significantly, increasing its contracted EBITDA 14-fold over the last four years. CPP Investments will hold a 60% controlling interest with a roughly $1.6 billion investment, while Equinix will own the remaining 40%. atNorth's infrastructure is heavily focused on sustainability, utilizing 100% renewable energy sources, a key advantage in the power-intensive AI sector. The company operates eight data centers across the Nordics—in Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway—with several more under development. This Nordic focus leverages the region's cool climate for natural data center cooling and provides access to abundant renewable energy. The acquisition is a strategic move by Equinix to meet the surging infrastructure demands of AI, which requires high-density data centers with advanced liquid cooling capabilities—a feature of atNorth's facilities. Equinix has been aggressively expanding its global data center capacity, with a goal to double it by 2029 to serve AI and cloud workloads. This deal complements Equinix's existing footprint of over 100 data centers in Europe. For CPP Investments, this transaction deepens its existing partnership with Equinix and expands its global data center and digital infrastructure portfolio. The pension fund has been actively investing in infrastructure assets that provide stable, long-term cash flows, including renewable energy and digital networks. A financing package of $4.2 billion has been secured to fund the transaction and atNorth's future expansion. atNorth currently has an active development pipeline of approximately 800 MW set to come online in the next five years and has already secured another 1 GW of power for future growth. The company specializes in high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, making it a prime asset for capturing the growth in AI-related workloads from hyperscale and enterprise clients. Its facilities are also designed for heat reuse, contributing to a circular economy by feeding excess heat into local district heating networks.
