BlackRock and IFM Plan $25 Billion Acquisition of Stack's Asia-Pacific Data Centers
nashnova research
BlackRock's AI infrastructure fund and Australia's IFM Investors have entered exclusive negotiations to acquire Stack Infrastructure's Asia-Pacific data center assets at a $20–25 billion valuation — potentially the largest data center deal in the region and a landmark test of how the market prices AI's physical backbone.
Who is buying, and what are they buying?
The buyer is a consortium of BlackRock's AI Infrastructure Partners (AIP) and Australia's IFM Investors. They have entered exclusive talks and are preparing to launch due diligence.
The target is Stack Infrastructure's Asia-Pacific data center portfolio, spanning Tokyo, Osaka, Melbourne, Sydney, and Johor Bahru, Malaysia — covering Japan, Australia, and Southeast Asia.
This means → the consortium is not buying buildings. It is buying critical nodes in Asia-Pacific's AI compute network — whoever controls these facilities controls the physical gateway for AI training and inference across the region.
$20–25 billion offered, but the seller wanted $30 billion — what's the gap about?
The consortium's valuation range is $20–25 billion. Stack's parent company, Blue Owl Capital, had sought over $30 billion — a gap of at least $5 billion.
In plain terms = the seller believes AI-era data centers command a premium; the buyer thinks prices have already stretched too far. This deal is itself a real-time pricing test for AI infrastructure assets.
Sources say both sides aim to close quickly, but negotiations are ongoing and could still stall or collapse.
What is AIP, and why does its backing matter?
AIP was co-founded by BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), Microsoft, and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala-backed MGX, with a mandate to invest in AI infrastructure.
Its investor roster also includes Nvidia, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and Singapore's Temasek — a near-complete lineup of the world's largest sovereign funds and top AI supply-chain companies.
AIP's first deal was a $40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centers, announced last October. This means → if the Stack Asia-Pacific deal closes, AIP will have locked up over $60 billion in data center assets in under a year — an extraordinarily aggressive pace.
What does this signal for the market?
If completed, this would rank as one of the largest data center M&A transactions in Asia-Pacific history and the latest sign that global capital is racing to secure AI infrastructure in the region.
This reflects a broader shift: the AI compute race is no longer just about chips and models. Whoever controls the physical facilities and power supply holds the foundation layer of the AI industry.
Yet the $5 billion valuation gap is also a reminder: market consensus on data center pricing has not yet formed, and buyers and sellers still disagree on the long-term return profile of AI infrastructure.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。