I Squared Acquires 10 Data Centers from Cogent to Diversify into AI Inference Market

It is reported that investment management firm I Squared Capital has announced the acquisition of 10 data center facilities from Cogent Fiber for $225 million in cash.

The firm plans to use these assets as the foundation for building a new data center operating platform in the United States and has committed to an additional $1 billion for technological upgrades, business expansion, and subsequent asset acquisitions.

This transaction covers nine geographical regions, signifying a shift in the investment focus of artificial intelligence infrastructure, from large centralized centers used for model training to AI inference facilities closer to end-users. In the computational power industry chain, model training and AI inference represent the "learning" and "execution" phases of artificial intelligence, respectively, with significant differences in hardware layout logic.

The acquired assets are distributed across nine major U.S. markets, including Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston, totaling approximately 530 megawatts of power capacity and about 259,000 square feet of colocation space. Gautam Bhandari, Co-founder and Managing Partner at I Squared Capital, stated that geographic location, power supply, and network connectivity are the three variables determining the long-term value of data centers, and these facilities possess all of these advantages in a market with severe supply constraints.

The transaction's selling party, Cogent Fiber, is an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of internet service provider Cogent Communications Holdings, whose stock price has fallen nearly 16% in the year 2026.

As an active buyer in the digital infrastructure sector, I Squared Capital has frequently been involved in computational infrastructure recently, having just completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Elea, a large data center platform in Brazil, last month.