Europe racks up data center deals worth $20 billion

European firms have launched nearly €17 billion ($20 billion) worth of data center deals in just a few weeks. Private equity and infrastructure investors across Europe are accelerating data center sales and acquisitions, riding on the surge in global artificial intelligence demand. 

Oaktree Capital Management, Partners Group, and EQT have each initiated multibillion-euro sales of their data center assets, following the momentum created by U.S.-based deals.

Oaktree has begun exploring the sale of part of its Pure DC business, valued at up to $5.85 billion in total, with data centers across Europe and the Middle East.

Switzerland’s Partners Group is seeking as much as $4.7 billion from the sale of atNorth, a Nordic data center operator. Sweden’s EQT, another major player in private equity, has also launched the sale of GlobalConnect, its broadband and data center business, which could fetch $9.4 billion.

Europe racks up data center deals

With the world’s largest technology firms racing to expand their AI infrastructure, private capital firms in Europe are now moving into positions to benefit from the surging demand. The surge in dealmaking highlights that investors are drawn to data centers’ stable, contracted revenue streams and their long-term demand outlook.

In the U.S., BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners is in advanced talks to buy Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie in a transaction that could be valued at nearly $40 billion, one of the largest deals ever in the sector.

Deutsche Bank’s DWS is preparing to sell its data center business NorthC, targeting around $2.3 billion, while Orange, France’s largest telecoms operator, plans to sell a stake in several of its French data centers.

“Some of these platforms are outgrowing their existing owners, and new investors with deeper pockets are stepping in to fund their multibillion-dollar cloud and AI infrastructure pipelines,” Burkhard Koep, JPMorgan’s head of media and telecoms for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said.

Record-breaking year for data infrastructure

Globally, the data center mergers and acquisitions market has already hit unprecedented levels. According to Synergy Research Group, there have been 162 completed deals worth more than $46 billion so far this year, with another 45 pending transactions valued at roughly $35 billion.

Last year was already a record-breaking period, with 287 data center deals closing at a combined value of over $77 billion. Analysts say 2025 could match or even exceed that milestone.

John Dinsdale, Synergy’s chief analyst, said the surge is being fueled by an “insatiable appetite for data center capacity” and the ongoing struggle of operators to finance expansion internally.

“What’s driving it? The usual — the need to keep on building new data centers, and the inability of current operators to fund those investments internally,” Dinsdale said. “Potential buyers view data centers as a safe bet for investments, so money is flooding into the market.”

Training and operating AI models require immense computational power, which has resulted in cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure expanding their capacity aggressively.

Private capital firms see the rush to finance next-generation infrastructure like high-efficiency cooling systems, renewable energy integration, and AI-optimized networking.

Analysts say this wave of deals reflects a “new era of digital infrastructure financing,” one in which traditional telecom and utility operators increasingly give way to global investment managers capable of meeting AI’s trillion-dollar infrastructure demands.

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