Follow the money: Datacentre mergers and acquisitions reach $57 billion in 2024
The surge in demand for AI-driven digital transformations is fueling extensive investments in datacentre facilities worldwide. To bolster cloud services and AI workloads, companies are pouring billions of dollars into constructing and acquiring these essential facilities. Datacentre-oriented merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in 2024 reached a staggering total of $57 billion, outpacing the $52 billion worth of deals completed in 2022, according to Synergy Research Group.
John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group, noted, “There has been a tremendous increase in the demand for datacentre capacity, driven by cloud services, social networking, and a range of consumer and enterprise digital services.” This growing demand shows no sign of slowing down, with generative AI technologies and services further propelling this trend. Private equity investors are stepping in to fund growth initiatives that specialist datacentre operators may not be able or prepared to finance independently. Looking ahead, the industry anticipates another robust year in 2025 for datacentre M&A, with $29 billion in deals already underway and a future pipeline surpassing $15 billion.
The largest M&A transactions of 2024 included equity investments in Vantage Data Centers totaling $9.2 billion and a $3.1 billion investment in its EMEA operations. However, a significant deal took place in December but may not be included in Synergy Research’s 2024 total. Investment firm Blackstone’s AUS$24 billion (US$14.8 billion) acquisition of Asia Pacific datacentre operator AirTrunk was touted as the “largest ever datacentre deal globally.” Notably, Synergy Research categorizes datacentre M&A deals into two segments: “megadeals” exceeding $2 billion and “regular” deals below that threshold. While regular deals dominated 2021 and 2023 experienced less activity, 2022 and 2024 witnessed a surge in megadeals.
Since 2015, Synergy Research has recorded 1,498 datacentre-oriented M&A deals worth approximately $300 billion globally. This extensive activity encompasses company acquisitions, minority equity investments, joint ventures, datacentre acquisitions, share sales, and land acquisitions for datacentre development. As the digital landscape continues to evolve rapidly, the pivotal role of datacentres in supporting cloud services and AI workloads cannot be understated. The ongoing influx of investments in datacentre facilities underscores their critical importance in driving the digital transformation initiatives of enterprises worldwide.
