The Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division (“GS MBD”) today announced that it has partnered with a seasoned management team, led by long-time data center industry executive Scott Peterson, to form Global Compute Infrastructure LP (“Global Compute” or the “Company”), a newly established global data center infrastructure platform.
GS MBD has initially committed to fund up to $500 million of equity capital, primarily from its infrastructure fund, West Street Infrastructure Partners III, LP (“WSIP III”), to enable approximately $1.5 billion in near-term investments deployed across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Global Compute intends to grow through a combination of acquisitions and organic development to serve customers in geographies with strong secular tailwinds and potential for significant data infrastructure growth. Leveraging the experience and track record of the management team, Global Compute will focus on acquiring and developing facilities that can meet the growing compute, storage, connectivity and colocation deployment needs of the world’s largest technology companies.
The founding Global Compute management team is led by CEO Scott Peterson, the former Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Digital Realty (“DLR”) with over 18 years of data center industry experience and over 30 years in the real estate investment arena. During his tenure at DLR from 2004 to 2018, Scott led all investment activities and was responsible for $17 billion in total deal volume across both M&A and organic development. Scott is joined by a number of established executives in the data center space; fellow DLR co-founder Christopher Kenney as COO, and former senior DLR executive in EMEA, Stephen Taylor as Head of Europe. Chris was largely responsible for the expansion of DLR’s footprint internationally, and Stephen led many of those initiatives throughout EMEA. The Global Compute team has the specialized experience, deep customer relationships, and breadth of capabilities to deliver best-in-class data center infrastructure globally.
Consistent with this strategy, on October 17, 2020, Global Compute signed an agreement to acquire ATM S.A. (“ATM”), the leading data center and communications infrastructure business in Poland from a consortium of funds managed by MCI Capital, the leading technology-focused private equity in CEE, and Mezzanine Management, the leading mezzanine fund in the region. Headquartered in Warsaw, ATM’s world-class data center assets, communication infrastructure footprint, customer base, and strong reputation in the market provide Global Compute with an attractive entry point into the rapidly growing Central and Eastern European data center market. Global Compute intends to build on ATM’s success and market leadership by positioning the company to service the growing deployment needs of both new and existing customers in Poland and the broader CEE region.
“Goldman Sachs is the perfect partner for us as we pursue global investment opportunities in the data infrastructure space,” according to Scott Peterson, CEO of Global Compute. “Our combined global pedigrees and networks, together with GS MBD’s access to ample growth capital, will allow the Global Compute platform to not only serve the critical needs of our customers around the world but also create and unlock value for our partners. Our initial investment in ATM S.A. is an ideal illustration of this collaboration. We are extremely enthusiastic about our partnership with Goldman Sachs enabling us to provide creative solutions for our global customers.”
“We are incredibly excited about partnering with Scott and the Global Compute team,” said Leonard Seevers, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. “We see a tremendous opportunity in the data center space driven by increasing computing and storage demand and we believe the Global Compute team, backed by the global resources of Goldman Sachs, is uniquely positioned to deliver world class solutions to meet that demand.”
GS MBD was advised by Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. The Global Compute management team was advised by PJT Park Hill and Mayer Brown, while Global Compute was advised by Torch Partners, and White & Case LLP, with respect to the ATM SA acquisition
