Digital Realty, Equinix battle for €4.5B atNorth acquisition
(2025/11/28)
- Reference: 1764320411
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/28/digital_realty_equinix_atnorth/
- Source link:
Digital Realty and a consortium including Equinix are competing to acquire atNorth, a Scandinavian datacenter operator, according to reports.
Partners Group, a Swiss private equity and real estate biz which bought atNorth in 2021, is understood to be seeking between €4 billion ($4.6 billion) and €4.5 billion ($5.2 billion), according to [1]Bloomberg and the [2]FT .
Now the bidders keen to snatch up the business are reported to include two of the largest multinational datacenter operators, Digital Realty and Equinix. Equinix is working with investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
[3]
The Register asked atNorth to comment.
[4]
[5]
atNorth operates nine datacenters across countries with cooler climates. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland are locations that offer significant cooling advantages for AI workloads.
For either buyer, the acquisition would provide both additional capacity and entry into markets beyond the main European hubs of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP).
[6]
As The Register [7]reported earlier this year, datacenter merger activity soared to new heights during 2024, driven by anticipated gains from the boom in AI development, with $57 billion worth of M&A deals being done last year.
[8]Norway's most powerful supercomputer will use waste heat to raise salmon
[9]Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges
[10]HSBC spies $207B crater in OpenAI's expansion goals
[11]Lenovo puts the 'cloud' in cloud computing, proposes mid-air datacenters
In May, we reported how the datacenter market was drawing large institutional investors who [12]see it as an attractive opportunity because of the potential returns, the high barriers to entry, and because many business customers find it difficult to change provider once they have signed up.
However, some observers – including [13]OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – have compared the [14]AI-driven investment frenzy to a bubble , potentially prompting Partners Group to exit at peak valuations.
[15]Secondary European datacenter markets are expanding due to lower power costs and the cool climate, but also because of the availability of land, which is in short supply in other places such as London. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-27/digital-realty-equinix-said-to-vie-for-nordic-data-center-firm
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/48a39d2c-f5ac-470e-b2ac-93cdc5eb4be7
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/2024_datacenter_deals/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/norway_salmon_super/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/openai_funding_gap_hsbc/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/06/lenovo_datacenter_vision/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/24/datacenter_market_captive_audience/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/15/boy_riding_bubble_realizes_what/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/datacenter_spending_ai/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/04/datacenter_demand_driven_by_ai/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Partners Group, a Swiss private equity and real estate biz which bought atNorth in 2021, is understood to be seeking between €4 billion ($4.6 billion) and €4.5 billion ($5.2 billion), according to [1]Bloomberg and the [2]FT .
Now the bidders keen to snatch up the business are reported to include two of the largest multinational datacenter operators, Digital Realty and Equinix. Equinix is working with investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
[3]
The Register asked atNorth to comment.
[4]
[5]
atNorth operates nine datacenters across countries with cooler climates. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland are locations that offer significant cooling advantages for AI workloads.
For either buyer, the acquisition would provide both additional capacity and entry into markets beyond the main European hubs of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP).
[6]
As The Register [7]reported earlier this year, datacenter merger activity soared to new heights during 2024, driven by anticipated gains from the boom in AI development, with $57 billion worth of M&A deals being done last year.
[8]Norway's most powerful supercomputer will use waste heat to raise salmon
[9]Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges
[10]HSBC spies $207B crater in OpenAI's expansion goals
[11]Lenovo puts the 'cloud' in cloud computing, proposes mid-air datacenters
In May, we reported how the datacenter market was drawing large institutional investors who [12]see it as an attractive opportunity because of the potential returns, the high barriers to entry, and because many business customers find it difficult to change provider once they have signed up.
However, some observers – including [13]OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – have compared the [14]AI-driven investment frenzy to a bubble , potentially prompting Partners Group to exit at peak valuations.
[15]Secondary European datacenter markets are expanding due to lower power costs and the cool climate, but also because of the availability of land, which is in short supply in other places such as London. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-27/digital-realty-equinix-said-to-vie-for-nordic-data-center-firm
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/48a39d2c-f5ac-470e-b2ac-93cdc5eb4be7
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSmAyHb8tPMrSxFD5RTiuwAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/2024_datacenter_deals/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/norway_salmon_super/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/openai_funding_gap_hsbc/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/06/lenovo_datacenter_vision/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/24/datacenter_market_captive_audience/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/15/boy_riding_bubble_realizes_what/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/datacenter_spending_ai/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/04/datacenter_demand_driven_by_ai/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Equinix is working with...Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
Hopefully Canucks don't mind their pension contributions being used to buy out private equity types just as the entire market is asking "is the AI bubble about to blow?"