An Australian data centre company founded less than 10 years ago has been acquired by US financial giant Blackstone in a blockbuster deal worth more than $24 billion.

It was confirmed overnight that AirTrunk, a Sydney-based company running 11 hyperscale data centres, had agreed to a deal to be bought out by funds managed by Blackstone, along with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), for an implied enterprise value of over $24 billion.

It marks the biggest acquisition of an Australian company this year and one of the biggest involving a tech company in recent years.

AirTrunk builds and runs data centres that can meet the demands of rapidly increasing cloud and AI demands in the Asia-Pacific region.

It currently operates 11 data centres: three in Sydney, one in Melbourne, three in Hong Kong, two in Tokyo, one in Johor Bahru (Malaysia) and one in Singapore.

It boasts the ability to provide scalable and sustainable data centres to large clients at a significantly lower build and operating cost than its competitors, and has come to dominate the data centres market in the Asia-Pacific region.

AirTrunk currently has more than 800MW of capacity committed to its existing customers, and has the land to support more than 1GW of future growth around the region.

A $24bn company in nine years

The company was founded by Robin Khuda, who immigrated to Australia from Bangladesh when he was 18 years old, in 2015.

Khuda will remain AirTrunk’s CEO following the buy-out and will retain a stake in the company.

“In 2015, I established AirTrunk to pioneer scalable and sustainable hyperscale data centres in the Asia-Pacific region,” Khuda said in a statement.

“In under a decade, we’ve built the largest platform in the region, with data centres in all major markets operating as essential digital infrastructure underpinning the digital economy.

“Today’s announcement is a testament to the strength of our platform, vision, execution and team – the experts and innovators, trusted by our customers to deliver and operate, with a passion to ensure sustainability is at the forefront of the finance, design, build and operations of our data centres.”


AirTrunk's Sydney global headquarters. Photo: Supplied

Macquarie Asset Management and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board acquired an 88 per cent stake in AirTrunk in 2020.

The two firms have now sold all their holdings in AirTrunk to the consortium led by Blackstone.

The deal will still need the tick of approval from the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.

Blackstone is the largest alternative asset manager in the world, and is best known in Australia as the owner of Crown Resorts.

The AirTrunk purchase is Blackstone’s largest investment ever in the Asia-Pacific region.

“This is Blackstone at its best – leveraging our global platform to capitalise on our highest conviction theme,” Blackstone president and chief operating officer Jon Gray said.

“AirTrunk is another vital step as Blackstone seeks to be the leading digital infrastructure investor in the world across the ecosystem, including data centres, power and related services.”

Powering the AI boom

In less than a decade, Khuda transformed AirTrunk from nothing into a $24 billion dollar tech giant.

After arriving in Australia, Khuda completed higher education and worked with tech entrepreneur Bevan Slattery, where he learned about data infrastructure.

After launching, AirTrunk secured its first deal to build a data centre in mid-2016 but struggled to secure funding.

Its first hyperscale data centre was officially launched in 2017, and the company has rapidly expanded in the years since.

“For AirTrunk, this is just the beginning, as we continue to capture the significant opportunities from the region’s vibrant digital future,” Khuda said.

Just last week the company announced that the third phase of its new data centre in Sydney had been completed ahead of schedule, adding an extra 30MW of custom-built capacity to the centre.

The huge acquisition ranks alongside some of the largest ever exits for Australian tech companies, including the 2021 acquisition of Afterpay by Jack Dorsey’s Square for $39 billion.

AirTrunk has regularly featured in lists ranking the best tech companies to work at in Australia.

It featured on the Great Place to Work 2023 list as one of the best medium-sized companies to work at, and ranked as the 20th best medium and large tech company to work at in Australia.