Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto, has entered into a C$1 billion ($710 million) joint venture with Pacific Asset Management Co. to develop data centers in South Korea, said a Nov. 21 news release.
CPP Investments has committed C$285 million to the joint venture’s initial seed project.
The agreement marks the second such data center joint venture between CPP Investments and Pacific AMC. The first joint venture was established in March 2022 to develop the Jukjeon Data Center, located in the eastern part of the Seoul metropolitan area. CPP had allocated C$135 million to that prior joint venture, according to a release issued on March 21, 2022.
“The demand for data centers in Asia-Pacific has been on the rise, driven by the continued need for cloud computing and the increasing global adoption of artificial intelligence,” said Max Biagosch, senior managing director, global head of real assets and head of Europe for CPP, in the latest release. “In South Korea, businesses continue to seek high-quality digital infrastructure to support the country’s emergence as a digital technology hub.”
Biagosch added that this new venture “not only represents another milestone in our broader data center strategy globally, but also expands a valued partnership with Pacific AMC.”
Pacific AMC is an alternative investment management company, specializing in real estate and is known for its presence in data center investments in Korea, according to the firm’s LinkedIn page.
CPP Investments made its first direct data center investment in October 2017, and has since established data center joint ventures and investments in major hubs across the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as in the U.S. and Canada.
In September 2024, CPP agreed to acquire a 12% stake in AirTrunk, an Asia-Pacific data center operator, from Macquarie Asset Management and other investors in a deal that valued the company at A$24 billion ($16.1 billion).
An October 2024 report from McKinsey & Co. estimated that global demand for data center capacity may rise at an annual rate of between 19% and 22% from 2023 to 2030 to reach 171 to 219 gigawatts of annual demand.
CPP has C$675.1 billion in assets.