Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) has committed to a USD $5.6 billion (CAD $7.6 billion) investment in hyperscale data facilities through a newly announced joint venture with the publicly traded digital infrastructure company, Equinix. The deal will see CPP Investments take a 37.5 per cent stake in Equinix’s planned buildout to add 1.5 gigawatts of new capacity for hyperscale clients in the United States.

The sovereign wealth fund, GIC, will also hold a 37.5 per cent equity interest as a third partner in the joint venture, leaving the remaining 25 per cent for Equinix. The joint venture is expected to obtain regulatory approval this fall.

This is a first partnership with Equinix for CPP Investments, but the data facility developer/operator currently has USD $8 billion of investment in play throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas as part of its larger joint venture portfolio. The company boasts more than 10,000 customers and 40 per cent of private on-ramps to leading global cloud service providers. It envisions the new joint venture with CPP Investments and GIC will provide capital to purchase land for “multiple” U.S.-based hyperscale campuses, each with more than 100 megawatts of capacity.

“As the world’s leading companies build out their infrastructure to support key workloads such as artificial intelligence, they require the combination of large-scale data centre footprints optimized for AI training and interconnection nodes for the most efficient inferencing,” observes Equinix chief executive officer and president, Adaire Fox-Martin.

“This investment will help meet the increasing demand for data centres driven by rapid technological advancements and marks a significant step forward in our broader data center strategy,” says Max Biagosch, CPP Investments’ global head of real assets. “We are pleased to partner with Equinix and GIC to deliver strong long-term risk-adjusted returns for the CPP fund.”