KKR to invest USD 1 bln in European venture for hyperscale data centres

The investment firm KKR has partnered with entrepreneur Franek Sodzawiczny to launch a data centre company in Europe. The new venture Global Technical Realty (GTR) will provide build-to-suit data centres for large technology companies in Europe. 

KKR is investing USD 1 billion as equity capital in the new company, as part of its third global infrastructure fund, and said it may provide additional funds in future to help GTR develop and build data centres. Alongside debt financing, KKR’s equity commitment is expected to support more than USD 2.5 billion of asset development and investment, including opportunities from a highly active commercial pipeline as the demand for third-party data centre provision continues to grow.

GTR has partnered with European contractor Mercury Engineering to design and develop a data centre product specifically catered to the needs of hyperscale cloud service providers. Sodzawiczny, the founder and CEO of Zenium Data Centers and co-founder and CDO of Sentrum, will serve as CEO of GTR. The management also will include Martin Carroll, formerly Lead Director, EMEA Data Center Advisory at JLL; Mark Trevor, formerly partner and head of EMEA Data Center Transaction and Advisory at Cushman & Wakefield; and Tom Sodzawiczny, formerly Associate Director of Capital Markets at Colliers International.